John Dice

Age 17, he enlisted in Kutztown on 5 December 1861 and mustered into service as Private, Company B, 107th Pennsylvania Infantry on 23 January 1862 in Harrisburg.

He was wounded by a gunshot to his right wrist which then lodged in his abdomen, in action near Turner's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862.

The bullet was removed at a field hospital near the battlefield and he was admitted to US Army General Hospital #5 in Frederick, MD on 18 September, where "Assistant Surgeon C.M. [Charles McIlvaine] Colton [1837-1864] performed 'excision of the wrist'." He was discharged from the service at Frederick on a Surgeon's Certificate of 18 November 1862 and granted a pension.

In 1867 a pension examiner noted that he had "some use of hand, much more than any artificial one would be." By 1871 his hand and fingers had improved to the point that the examiner recommended a reduction in his pension, but in 1873 his hand was flexed and his fingers were "quite rigid, and movement of the wrist joint greatly impaired." He lived for "many years" in Reading and was a carpenter.

Service information from Bates1 and the Card File,2 both as John Dice. Wound and hospital details from the Patient List 3 and the MSHWR,4 source of the quotes above. His gravesite is on Findagrave, as John Dies; source also of details from his obituary in the Reading Eagle of 11 November 1921.

His father Lewis Dice (1818-1883) was in the same Company and was discharged for disability in October 1862.

09/12/1844; Lyons, PA

11/12/1921; Robeson Township, Berks County, PA; burial in St. John's UCC Cemetery, Gibraltar, PA