George J. Whitman

He served in the Mexican War, enlisting as Private, Company E, 2nd Illinois Infantry on 4 June 1847 at Belvidere, IL. He was promoted to Corporal in April 1848. The Regiment mustered out on 25 July 1848. By then from Darlington, WI, he enlisted in Company H, 3rd Wisconsin Infantry on 22 April 1861, and was commissioned Captain of the Company on 24 April.

He was wounded in action on 17 September 1862 at Antietam.

He was discharged 14 April 1863 for disability from wounds. He was at the Avenue House Hotel in Washington, DC in March 1863.

He was in Darlington at the 1870 Federal Census and a "retired merchant" with heart disease in Fond du Lac in 1880. He was living in Cedar, NE by 1885, and in Ericson, NE at the census of veterans of 1891.

Basic information from Bryant1. Mexican service in the Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Illinois Adjutant General's Office, 1882), as George S. Whitman. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Details from family genealogists online. Some records have his name as George J. S. Whitman. The Avenue House sighting from a letter of the poet Walt Whitman, who saw a notice of his arrival in a newspaper, briefly confusing him with his Brother George W Whitman (no relation after all).

09/16/1828; Fort Miller, NY

07/30/1892; Ord, NE; burial in Belvidere Cemetery, Belvidere, IL