(1844 - 1924)
Home State: Massachusetts
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
A 17 year old mechanic in Templeton, MA, he enlisted at Worcester as a Private in Company A, 21st Massachusetts Infantry on 19 July 1861. He was promoted to Corporal on 15 June 1862.
On the Campaign
He was wounded in the face in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was promoted to Corporal about March 1863 and detailed to the color guard. He reenlisted on 1 January 1864, was captured in the Wilderness, VA on 6 May, as a Sergeant, and was a prisoner until exchanged and paroled at Charleston (or Florence), SC on 16 December 1864. He was then at Camp Parole, Annapolis, MD, furloughed home for 60 days, then at Camp Distribution, Alexandria, VA. He was discharged and mustered out of service on 26 May 1865.
After the War
By June 1865 he was living with his parents in Templeton, MA and working as a mechanic. He married in December and by 1870 he was a stove and tinware dealer in Barre, MA. In 1874 he was initiated as a Freemason in New Haven, CT, in about 1880 he had a house built there at 80 Bristol Street, and to at least 1910 he was a tinsmith/sheet metal worker in New Haven. He was retired and living with his wife in New Haven in 1920.
References & notes
His service from Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines,1 as Albert J. Osgood, and his Compiled Service Records,2 via fold3. Wound detail from Walcott.3 Personal details from family genealogists, the Massachusetts State Census of 1865, and the US Census for 1870-1920. His gravesite is on Findagrave; his stone has him as J. Albert Osgood.
He married Elizabeth D. "Lizzie" Comerford (1841-1922) in December 1865.
Birth
03/03/1844; Petersham, MA
Death
1924; burial in Pine Grove Cemetery, Templeton, MA
1 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Adjutant General, Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War, 8 Vols, Norwood (MA): Norwood Press, 1931-35, Vol. 2, pg. 601 [AotW citation 26507]
2 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Soldiers who served in US Volunteer organizations enlisted for service during the Civil War, Record Group No. 94 (Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 26508]
3 Walcott, Charles Folsom, History of the Twenty-first Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, in the War for the Preservation of the Union, 1861-1865, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882, pg. 207 [AotW citation 26509]