David Sebre Howard

In 1860 he was a 17 year old farm worker living with his parents and 3 siblings on their place in West Bloomfield Township near Pontiac in Oakland County, MI. He enlisted 22 July 1862 in Ypsilanti, MI and mustered as a Corporal in Company E, 17th Michigan Infantry on 19 August.

He was wounded by a gunshot to his left hip joint in action at Fox's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862.

He was treated on the field and later at the Locust Springs hospital on the Geeting Farm near Keedysville, MD. He was discharged for disability at Detroit, MI on 1 June 1863.

He returned to Pontiac and in 1870 was a farm worker there. He was a traveling salesman there by 1880 and to at least 1900, but had retired in Pontiac by 1910. He was twice Mayor and also Oakland County Clerk, and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic veterans' group. He began receiving a veteran's pension for disability in March 1903.

His service from the Record.1 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1920, his pension card, and his death notice in the Grand Rapids Press of 29 October 1923. His gravesite is on Findagrave, source also of an excellent post-war photograph contributed by great-great-grandson Brian Douglas Saylor in 2021.

He married Julia Elizabeth Comstock (1843-1927) in May 1868 and they had 3 daughters.

03/26/1843; Meadville, PA

10/8/1923; West Bloomfield, MI; burial in Oak Hill Cemetery, Pontiac, MI