Daniel E. Munger

A 23 year old farmer, he enlisted in Chicago, IL as a Private in Battery C, 3rd United States Artillery on 29 December 1857.

He was with the combined Batteries C and G, 3rd US Artillery on the Maryland Campaign of September 1862 and was afterward mentioned by Captain Gibson "as worthy of commendation and reward."

He reenlisted in Knoxville, TN in November 1862 and was discharged at Benton, AR in November 1865, by then a Private.

He enlisted again, in February 1869 at Camp Douglas, Wyoming Territory, in Company C, 4th US Infantry and was discharged on October 1871 at Fort Buford, Dakota Territory. He enlisted yet again in Omaha, NE on 10 September 1873 in Company A, 2nd US Cavalry and reenlisted at Ft. Keogh, Montana in September 1878 and again at Ft. Maginnis, MT in September 1883. He died on guard duty on 4 July 1886 of "fatty degeneration of the heart" at Humphrey's Ranch (near modern-day Cochise Stronghold), Arizona Territory. Assistant Surgeon Edward Everts told his commanding officer, Captain Gustavus C Doane that the cause of death was a heart attack brought on by heavy drinking. At the Captain's direction his fellow soldiers built Munger a tomb nearby.

His service from the Registers.1 His role at Antietam from Captain Gibson's after-action report. Death details from Kim Allen Scott's "Whiskey is the enemy most formidable in this campaign": Capt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane's Fight with Boredom and Vice during the Geronimo Pursuit in The Journal of Arizona History (Spring 2007).

Professor Scott also noted

Unfortunately, Private Munger would not be allowed to rest in peace. Like many isolated historic and prehistoric burial sites in southern Arizona, Munger's grave has been severely vandalized during the last 120 years. It now sits empty on a lonely knoll at Cochise Stronghold. The huge granite slab that the men hauled up the hill to place over the tomb has been shoved aside, and the coffin has been extricated. A well-meaning hiker took Munger's tombstone to the St. David Cemetery in the 1960s, but the whereabouts of Munger's remains are still a mystery.

c. 1834; Chautauqua County, NY

07/04/1886; Humphrey's Ranch, Cochise County, AZ