Thomas Riley

He enlisted as a Private in Company D, 6th Louisiana Infantry on 4 June 1861 at Camp Moore near Tangipahoa, LA. He was absent, ill, in July and/or August 1862, then back with his Company.

He was "killed at the blowing up of a bridge at Frederick, MD" - the B&O Railroad's iron suspension bridge over the Monocacy River near Frederick, which was blown by Confederate troops on 8 September 1862.

The 14th New Jersey Infantry had been assigned guard duty at the railroad bridge just a day or two before the Confederates arrived in September 1862, and were quickly pulled back to Baltimore. When they returned to the bridge on 16 September

Everything looked desolate. The bridge destroyed, remnants of wagons, dead horses and mules lying around... It was raining hard and very muddy ...

The rebels [had] left a squad of men to destroy the bridge; in the attempt one man was blown up and buried near the ruins, leaving his arms and head above ground. This was the first rebel the men had ever seen, and for some time was an object of curiosity to us; he lay exposed several days; at last his remains were taken up and decently interred by our men ...

His service from Booth.1 The 14th New Jersey story quoted above is from J. Newton Terrill's Campaign of the Fourteenth Regiment New Jersey Volunteers (1884), online from the Internet Archives.

Date not known in MS

09/08/1862; Monocacy Junction, MD