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C.L. Taylor

C.L. Taylor

Federal (USV)

Sergeant

Charles Lyman Taylor

(1837 - 1909)

Home State: Connecticut

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 16th Connecticut Infantry

Before Antietam

In 1860 he was a bookkeeper in Bristol, CT living with his parents and sister. He enlisted as a Sergeant in Company K, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 29 July 1862.

On the Campaign

He was in action with his Company at Antietam on 17 September 1862:

... I could see the bullets strike around me ... I stayed as long as I could see our company, and when they were all leaving I left ... I fired one shot before leaving the corn field and but one, as we had no order, and the rebels came into the cornfield with our colors, thus deceiving our officers.

The rest of the War

He was reduced to Private in April 1863, due to his lack of military ability, and was detailed as a clerk to Division headquarters in August. He was sent to rejoin his regiment at Plymouth, NC in April 1864, but did not arrive there before the bulk of his regiment were captured on the 20th. He was afterward at New Bern, NC to the end of the war, and mustered out there on 24 June 1865.

After the War

In 1870 and to at least 1880 he was a bookkeeper in Meriden, CT.

References & notes

Service information from the Record.1 The quote above from an 1862 letter he wrote his wife, part of a very large collection sold by the Swann Auction Galleries in November 2016, and again by Heritage Auctions in October 2017, also the source of his photograph. Thanks to Jim Silliman for the pointers to those. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860-1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Harriet Wenslow Tuttle (1840-1916) in August 1862 and they had 5 children between 1866 and 1876.

Birth

08/02/1837; Bristol, CT

Death

10/04/1909; Meriden, CT; burial in West Cemetery, Meriden, CT

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, pg. 637  [AotW citation 27408]