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J.P. Hastings
(c. 1841 - 1875)
Home State: Indiana
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 19th Indiana Infantry
Before Antietam
From Delaware County, IN, age 20, he enlisted on 29 July 1861 as a Private in Company K, 19th Indiana Infantry.
On the Campaign
He was wounded by a gunshot through his left forearm which shattered his elbow in action at Turner's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862.
The rest of the War
Surgeons at a field hospital near the battlefield removed pieces of bone from his elbow. He was admitted to US Army General Hospital #1 in Frederick, MD on 18 September, where surgeons removed more bone from both his upper and lower arm, in several operations. He was discharged for wounds there on 6 February 1863, his left arm now 2 inches shorter and virtually useless.
After the War
By 1870 he was a wagon maker in Jay County, IN. In September 1873 an examining surgeon reported:
There is very little motion at the resected point [elbow], and the arm is flexed nearly at a right angle; the biceps and triceps muscles are very much atrophied. The disability is equivalent to the loss of an arm and is permanent.He died young, age 34, in 1875.
References & notes
His service from the Adjutant General,2 who says he was wounded at Antietam on 17 September. Medical and hospital details from the Patient List 2 and the MSHWR.3 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1850 & 1870. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph in the Paul Russinoff Collection, as reproduced in Military Images (Autumn 2018).
He married Elizabeth A Gilbert (c. 1846-) in August 1863 and they had 2 children.
Birth
c. 1841; Highland County, OH
Death
01/15/1875; Powers, IN; burial in Fairview Cemetery, Fairview, IN
1 State of Indiana, Adjutant General's Office, and William H.H. Terrell, Adjutant General, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, 8 volumes, Indianapolis: (various) State Printers, 1865-1869 [AotW citation 30480]
2 National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and Terry Reimer, Frederick Patient List, Published 2018, first accessed 17 September 2018, <http://www.civilwarmed.org/explore/primary-sources/databases/frederickpatient/>, Source page: patient #4.026 [AotW citation 30481]
3 Barnes, Joseph K., and US Army, Office of the Surgeon General, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 6 books, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1870-1883, Volume 2, Part 2, p. 872 (Case 1804) [AotW citation 30482]