James Albert Hard

Going by Albert, and giving his age as 19, he enlisted on 14 May 1861 at New York City to serve two years and mustered as a Private in Company K, 32nd New York Infantry on 31 May. He transferred to Company E the same day.

He was with his company in action at Crampton's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862 and afterward, he later remembered,

we fell out of the ranks and went into a field of corn and sweet potatoes to have a feast. Well, we ate so much we could hardly walk, and we were lying around after supper feeling pretty good when some lancers came up.

Lancers were like military police. They picked us up and took us down to Antietam. When we got there it was the night before the battle [of 17 September] and they shoved us into the first regiment they found.

The lancers' lieutenant told a captain to keep an eye on us and make us fight - and I guess we did. I never did find out the name of the regiment, but I think it was from Massachusetts...

I had some pretty close calls. One bullet went through my coat, but didn't scratch me. I was pretty scared, but the captain says keep on fighting. I think I was pretty lucky, but, of course, if I'd been with my own regiment there wouldn't have been much danger.

After the battle was over I went back to my own regiment. We did guard duty on the battlefield that evening and helped pick up wounded and the dead ...

He was in action again at Fredericksburg, VA in December and at Chancellorsville in May 1863, and mustered out with his company on 9 June 1863 in New York City. He afterward went to Washington, DC and worked as a civilian in Army railroad construction for the rest of the war in Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia.

He spent 4 years in Iowa and Nebraska working on railroads, then returned East in 1869. He lived back near his parents in Windsor, NY to at least 1870, then was a carpenter in Erie, PA. He moved to Rochester in 1882 where he continued to work as a contractor and carpenter. Beginning in 1890 he was a notary and government pension agent with his own office, and was in business for 37 years, to 1927. He was retired in Rochester by 1930 and was living with his granddaughter Lola Alberta Osborne Eksten and family in Rochester by 1940. In 1950 he was a lodger/patient with Earl Dieter and family in the Dieter Sanitarium at 31 Portsmouth Terrace there.

At his death at age 111 he was the last surviving Union combat veteran of the American Civil War.

His service from the Adjutant General.1 Personal details from his own scrapbook, online from the Rochester Public Library, from family genealogists, and from the US Census of 1860-1950. The Antietam quote above from his own words in the Rochester Times-Union of 11 July 1950. His gravesite is on Findagrave; Census data suggests his birth was in 1842 or 1843, rather than his stated 1841. His picture here from a photograph of him at age 20 published in the Rochester Times-Union of 14 July 1950.

He married Loduska Davis (1842-1880) in 1868 and they had a daughter Alberta (1873-1948). He married again, Anna M West (1851-1929) in November 1884.

07/15/1841; Victor, NY

03/12/1953; Rochester, NY; burial in Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, NY