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L.E.F. Spofford
(1843 - 1887)
Home State: Connecticut
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 8th Connecticut Infantry
Before Antietam
From Norwich, CT, a recent graduate of the Norwich Free Academy, he enlisted at age 17 on 3 September 1861 and mustered as a Private in Company D, 8th Connecticut Infantry on 21 September. He was promoted to Sergeant on 1 August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was severely wounded in the left arm in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
His arm was amputated at a field hospital near the battlefield by Surgeon Storrs of his regiment. He returned to duty and was appointed Sergeant Major of the regiment on 1 January 1863. He was wounded again, in his right arm, at Port Walthall Junction on the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad on 7 May 1864. He was discharged at the end of his 3-year term of enlistment on 20 September 1864.
After the War
He was Chaplain of his GAR Post in Norwich by 1869 and later a member of the Society of the Army of the Potomac. In 1870 was assistant librarian at the Otis Library in Norwich, CT but by 1872 and to at least July 1887 he was a clerk in the US General Land Office in Washington, DC.
References & notes
His service from the Record,1 as Forrest Spafford. Wound and amputation details from the MSHWR.2 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1870 & 1880, and the Official Register of the United States (1872, 1887); he's also seen as Lewis Edwin/Edward Forrest Spofford. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs, Library of Congress.
He married Sarah McCall (1841-1920) in August 1867 and they had a daughter Lilian (1876-1948).
Birth
12/29/1843; Lowell, MA
Death
09/16/1887; Salt Sulphur Springs, WV; burial in Yantic Cemetery, Norwich, CT
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, p. 339 [AotW citation 30553]
2 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. 712 [AotW citation 30554]