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(1839 - 1911)
Home State: Massachusetts
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
At about age 17 he'd gone West for 4 years, then returned east and in 1860 he was an apothecary in Nashua, NH. He was a 22 year old farmer in Lowell, MA when he enlisted as a Corporal in Company A, 2nd Massachusetts Infantry on 25 May 1861. He was appointed Sergeant, date not given, and wounded on 24 or 25 May 1862 at Winchester, VA. He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant on 20 August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was with his Company on South Mountain and at Antietam in September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was promoted to First Lieutenant on 31 December 1862 and wounded again, at Chancellorsville, VA on 3 May and at Gettysburg, PA on 3 July 1863. He was promoted to Captain to date from 7 July 1863, wounded yet again at Peach Tree Creek in Georgia on 20 July 1864, and mustered out on 6 May 1865 for disability. He began receiving a pension in September 1865.
After the War
He was commissioned Captain and Military Storekeeper (Quartermaster's Department), US Army on 28 July 1866 and served in the West, but was tried by a Court Martial at San Antonio, TX in October 1872 on charges of defrauding the government for his own benefit in dozens of incidents going back to 1870. He was found guilty and cashiered on 30 November 1872. He went to Florida in 1877 and grew oranges near Jacksonville, FL. In 1880 and to at least 1909 he was a railroad clerk in Jacksonville.
References & notes
Basic information from Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines,1 and Heitman.2 His presence on the Maryland Campaign and other details from Henry.3 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860 and 1880-1910, his bio sketch in Quint's Record,4 and US War Department, Adjutant General's Office, General Court Marital Orders No. 35 of 30 November 1872. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
He married Anna Baldwin (1851-1898) and they had 5 children between 1870 and 1881. He married again, his brother Leverett A. Sawyer's widow Salome Clara Ripley (1842-) in July 1909 in Bloomfield, NJ, apparently to ensure her financial future; they did not live together, he in Florida, she remaining in New Jersey (per the New York Times of 8 August 1909).
Birth
02/28/1839; Salem, MA
Death
03/02/1911; Jacksonville, FL; burial in Evergreen Cemetery, Jacksonville, FL
1 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Adjutant General, Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War, 8 Vols, Norwood (MA): Norwood Press, 1931-35, Vol. 1, pg. 78 [AotW citation 28640]
2 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, pg. 862 [AotW citation 28641]
3 Henry, Guy Vernor, Military Record of Civilian Appointments in the United States Army, 2 Volumes, New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1873, Vol. 1, pg. 39 [AotW citation 28642]
4 Quint, Alonzo Hall, The Record of the Second Massachusetts Infantry: 1861-1865, Boston: James P. Walker, 1867, pg. 502 [AotW citation 28643]