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G. East
(1838 - 1923)
Home State: Kentucky
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 27th Indiana Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was a 21 year old farm worker on the Joseph Reynolds place near Columbia in Adair County, KY. Credited to Bartholomew County, IN, he enlisted on 12 September 1861 and mustered as a Private in Company C, 27th Indiana Infantry. He was promoted to Corporal, date not given, and was assigned as Color Corporal and flag bearer.
On the Campaign
He was wounded by gunshot to his left thigh in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was in a hospital in Frederick, MD from 27 - 30 September, then transferred to Philadelphia, returning to duty about 15 November 1862. He was wounded again, by a buckshot in the other thigh in action near Culp's Hill at Gettysburg, PA on 3 July 1863 and was in hospitals in York, PA, Baltimore, MD, and finally, Covington, KY. He returned to his Company in February 1864 and mustered out with them at Louisville, KY on 1 September 1864.
After the War
He was probably in Coles County, IL in 1868 and in Wilson County, KS in 1870, and by 1880 and to at least 1920, then 81 years old, was a farmer in Wilson County.
References & notes
His service from Brown,1 the Adjutant General,2 and the Historical Data Systems database. Hospital information from the Patient List 3 and Jones.4 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860, 1880-1920. He's sometimes seen as George D East, but I've found no evidence that he had a middle name. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Thanks to Denice Spangler Adams for the nudge to look more carefully into Corporal East and for supplying his photograph, of unknown provenance.
He married Ann Catherine Shinn (1848-1933) in December 1867 in Illinois and they had 11 children.
Birth
02/01/1838; Columbia, KY
Death
11/02/1923; Fredonia, KS; burial in Altoona Cemetery, Altoona, KS
1 Brown, Edmund Randolph, The Twenty-Seventh Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion, Monticello, IN: E.R. Brown, 1899, pg. 581 [AotW citation 18448]
2 State of Indiana, Adjutant General's Office, and William H.H. Terrell, Adjutant General, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, 8 volumes, Indianapolis: (various) State Printers, 1865-1869, Vol. IV, p. 617 [AotW citation 34484]
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 #4.685 [AotW citation 18449]
4 Jones, Wilbur D., Jr., Giants in the Cornfield: the 27th Indiana Infantry, Shippenburg (Pa.): White Mane Publishers, 1997, pp. 109, 276 (note 85) [AotW citation 34483]