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Federal (USV)

Sergeant

Harmy Bruns

(1842 - 1908)

Home State: Connecticut

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 16th Connecticut Infantry

Before Antietam

From Bridgeport, he enlisted as a Private in Company H, 2nd Connecticut Infantry on 23 April 1861 and mustered out with them on 7 August 1861. By then a 21 year old mechanic in Bristol, he enlisted again, as a Sergeant in Company K, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 22 July 1862.

On the Campaign

He was demoted to Private on 14 September 1862 at Frederick, MD for being away from camp and missing roll call. He was probably in action with his Company at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He was promoted to First Sergeant of the Company on 25 December 1862 and commissioned 2nd Lieutenant on 1 July 1863.

He was captured on 20 April 1864 at Plymouth, NC and was held at Libby Prison, Richmond, VA; Charleston and Columbia, SC; Salisbury and Charlotte, NC; and Macon, GA. He escaped from Charlotte and Columbia, but was recaptured. He was paroled at Columbia on 10 December 1864 and mustered out with the regiment at New Bern, NC on 24 June 1865.

After the War

He married in Minnesota in 1869 but was back in Bridgeport, CT in 1874. In 1880 he was farming at Viola, Olmsted County, MN and was a member of a Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) post in Mower County. By 1894 he was in Le Mars, Iowa.

References & notes

Service information from the Record,1 with details from Gordon.2 His parole at Columbia from a list of POW officers in the New York Times of 6 February 1865. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Emma Isabelle Kennedy (1842-) in Winona, MN in July 1867 and they had 2 children.

Birth

07/06/1842; New York City, NY

Death

10/26/1908; Le Mars, IA; burial in Memorial Cemetery, Le Mars, IA

Notes

1   State of Connecticut, Adjutant General's Office, and AGs Smith, Camp, and Barbour, and AAG White, Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the Army and Navy of the United States during the War of the Rebellion, Hartford: Press of the Case, Lockwood, and Brainard Company, 1889, pp. 29, 637  [AotW citation 27340]