Daniel Morse Holt

He attended medical school in Cincinnati, OH, graduating in 1853. On the death of his (first) wife in August that year, he returned to Herkimer County, NY and began a medical practice there. In 1860 he was a 41 year old physician in Newport, Herkimer County, NY. In August 1862 he enrolled in Albany, and he mustered as Assistant Surgeon of the 121st New York Infantry on 2 September.

His regiment was not engaged at Crampton's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September, but they remained there to the morning of 18 September gathering stragglers and burying the dead; Holt was not detailed to a field hospital but remained with his regiment, tending to sick troops. They were then ordered to the batlefield of Antietam and arrived there late on 18 September. He afterward treated the wounded at a field hospital near Bakersville, about a mile north of the battlefield, later recounting:

I have seen, stretched along, in one straight line, ready for interment, at least a thousand blackened, bloated corpses with blood and gas protruding from every orifice, and maggots holding high carnival over their heads. Such sights, such smells and such repulsive feelings as overcome one, are with difficulty described. Then add the scores upon scores of dead horses, sometimes whole batteries lying alongside, still adding to the commingling mass of corruption and you get a faint, a very faint idea of what you see, and can always see after a sanguinary battle.

Every house for miles around is a hospital and I have seen arms, legs, feet and hands lying in piles rotting in the blazing heat of a Southern sky unburied and uncared for, and still the [my?] knife went steadily in its work adding to the putrid mess.

He resigned, afflicted with tuberculosis, and was discharged on 16 October 1864.

By 1865 he was again practicing medicine in Newport, but died there of tuberculosis only 3 years later.

His service from the State of New York,1 with details from Best,2 source also of his photograph. His personal history, role on the campaign, and the quote above, from a letter he wrote his wife on 25 September 1862, are found in Greiner, Coryell, and Smither's (eds.), A Surgeon’s Civil War: The Letters and Diary of Daniel M. Holt, M.D. (1994). Further details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860, and the New York State Census of 1865. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Euphrasia Parkhurst (1816-1853) and they had 3 children between 1842 and 1846. He married again, Mary Louisa Willard (1823-1894) in March 1856 and they had 4 children; two of whom died as infants.

06/06/1819; Herkimer County, NY

10/15/1868; Newport, NY; burial in Newport Cemetery, Newport, NY