Nathan Hayward

He was a graduate of Harvard College in 1850 and of its Medical School in 1855. By 1861 he was a 31 year old physician in Roxbury, MA, and he was commissioned Assistant Surgeon, 20th Massachusetts Infantry on 1 July 1861. He was appointed Surgeon on 10 September 1861.

He was captured at Antietam on 17 September 1862 while tending the wounded Lieutenant Colonel Francis W. Palfrey. He was released shortly after and treated wounded soldiers at the 2nd Corps field hospital on the Susan Hoffman Farm just north of Sharpsburg.

He continued in field service with his regiment until honorably discharged on 19 September 1864. He was honored by brevets to Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel, USV in March 1865.

He set up a practice in St. Louis, MO in 1865 but died there during a cholera outbreak in 1866.

Service information from Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines.1 Details from Brown's Harvard University in the War of 1861-1865 (1886) and his death notice in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of 24 August 1866. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from an 1862 CDV in the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment carte de visite album at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

See more about his work as a sketch artist while a student at Harvard in a blog post about student life from the Harvard Library.

1830

08/17/1866; St. Louis, MO; burial in Bellefontaine Cemetery, Saint Louis, MO