Lewis H. Roth

He mustered into service in Company E, 12th Pennsylvania Reserves on 30 May 1861. He was wounded in action at 2nd Bull Run in August 1862.

He was wounded again, in action on South Mountain on 14 September 1862.

He was admitted to the Novitiate Hospital, Frederick, MD on 18 September, where the surgeon hoped to save his arm, but could not, and it was amputated on 2 October. He healed quickly and was discharged for disability on 15 December 1862.

I received four wound[s], the one causing my right arm to be amputated at the shoulder joint. I came home on Christmas 1862 maimed and crippled for life without parents or relatives to support me ...

I had no education when I came home, and the little I now possess [December 1865] I got by hard study and by the little money I saved from my monthly wages while in the U S service.

In 1880 he was a justice of the peace in Slatedale, PA, but by 1884 he had moved to Washington, DC, and worked in the US Federal Pension Office there to at least 1910.

Basic service from Bates1, who has him discharged for his Second Bull Run wounds. Hardin's History of the Twelfth Regiment, Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps (1890) says he died of wounds on 15 December 1862. Details of his treatment from a 2017 post by Jake Wynn on the blog of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Frederick and from a letter he wrote entering a left-hand penmanship contest, now at the Library of Congress, source also of the quotes above. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1880-1910. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Sarah E. Sechler (1851-1901) and they had 5 children between 1869 and 1884.

05/15/1839 in PA

11/01/1916; Philadelphia, PA; burial in Slatedale Cemetery, Lehigh County, PA