James Manter Greenleaf

In 1860 he was a 30 year old farmer with a small place at Starks in Somerset County, ME, but was probably a resident of Northeast, Erie County, PA by 1862. He enlisted there and mustered on 26 August 1862 as a Private in Company C of the 145th Pennsylvania Infantry.

He was with his company in Maryland and on 17 September marched from near Hagerstown, MD to the Antietam battlefield, arriving just after noon. They were posted on the Potomac River at the far right of the army, and may have been under occasional enemy artillery fire. They had duty burying the dead in the days immediately after the battle.

He was seriously wounded by a gunshot to his face in action at Fredericksburg, VA on 13 December 1862, his frontal and jaw bones broken, and his right eye destroyed. He was treated at the Judiciary Square army hospital in Washington, DC to at least April 1863, then sent home. He began receiving a veteran's pension that month and was discharged for disability on 21 December 1863.

His eye wound never healed and he suffered with it for the rest of his life. By 1870 he was back in Sparks, his widowed mother Asenath and brother Benjamin nearby, and was a farmer there to at least 1900. He'd retired in Sparks by 1910, then age 80.

His service basics from Bates,1 as James M. Greenlief. His presence at Antietam and other details from the Lewiston Saturday Journal of 1 February 1913, source also of a post-war picture of him with his wife. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1910, and his pension card, online from fold3. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Thanks to 3x great-niece Karen R for the pointers to Greenleaf and the Journal article (via GoogleBooks).

He married Mary Elizabeth Rackliff (1832-1915) in February 1853 and they had 7 or 8 children.

A photograph of him, a "seated, white-bearded man, with head-covering that appears to be evidence of a past injury," is among the Burt Green Wilder papers [finding aid] at Cornell University. Wilder was a medical cadet at the Judiciary Square Hospital in 1862.

There's a watercolor image of him (#CWMI 62, c. 1863) by Augustus Pohlers showing “fracture of frontal bone and lower jaw, loss of right eye,” now in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine [finding aid]. Pohlers was a US Army Hospital Steward 1862-65.

02/07/1830; Starks, ME

01/27/1916; Sparks, ME; burial in Greenleaf Cemetery, Starks, ME