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Federal (USV)

Private

Luna W. Benson

(1822 - 1906)

Home State: Connecticut

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 16th Connecticut Infantry

Before Antietam

He was a shoemaker in Massachusetts until moving to Connecticut in 1861. At age 40, from Union, CT, he enlisted 11 August and mustered 24 August 1862 in Company I, 16th Connecticut Infantry.

On the Campaign

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

The rest of the War

He had his right leg amputated and was in a US Army hospital in Frederick, MD from 5 December 1862 until he was discharged for disability on 16 January 1863.

After the War

He moved to a farm in Minnesota in 1877. He was elected chair of the town Council of Martinsburg, Renville County in 1878 at its initial organization. By 1883, then living in Hector, he was receiving a pension of $18 per month for the loss of his leg.

References & notes

Casualty information from Nelson,1 as Lunar W. Benson. Service data from Ingersoll.2. Frederick detail from the Patient List.3 Personal information from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860 and 1880. Further details from Edward Neill's History of the Minnesota Valley (1882). His gravesite is on Findagrave.

Birth

07/10/1822; Sturbridge, MA

Death

12/24/1906; Glencoe, MN; burial in Glencoe City Cemetery, Glencoe, MN

Notes

1 Nelson, John H., As Grain Falls Before the Reaper: The Federal Hospital Sites and Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Hagerstown: John H. Nelson, 2004, pg. 130 [AotW citation 16389]

2 Ingersoll, Colin Macrae, Adjutant-General, Catalogue of Connecticut Volunteer Organizations in the Service of the United States, 1861-1865, Hartford: Brown & Gross, 1869, pg. 660 [AotW citation 16390]

3 National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and Terry Reimer, Frederick Patient List, Published 2018, first accessed 17 September 2018, <http://www.civilwarmed.org/explore/primary-sources/databases/frederickpatient/>, Source page: patient #867 [AotW citation 27257]

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