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(1843 - 1913)
Home State: Massachusetts
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was 17 years old and lived with his widowed mother and 8 siblings in Melrose, MA. He was a 19 year old clerk when he enlisted in Boston as a Private in Company A, 13th Massachusetts Infantry on 4 August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was wounded in the face in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was treated in a hospital in Chambersburg, PA. He was on detached duty to the Adjutant General's Office (AGO), US War Department in Washington, DC from 10 December 1862 to 30 November (or 1 December) 1863, when he was discharged to enlist in the Regular Army. He enlisted in the General Service of the Army but was discharged from it on 31 March 1864 to accept a permanent appointment as a clerk in the AGO, US War Department.
After the War
He continued as a clerk in the Adjutant General's Office in the US War Department, Washington, DC to at least 1913, serving nearly 50 years there altogether.
References & notes
His service information from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. Wound and hospital details from Nelson.3 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860, 1880 (DC & MA) - 1910, and the Official Register of the United States (var. 1865-1913). His gravesite is on Findagrave.
His brother Albert was also in Company A and wounded at Antietam.
He married Emma E Sanford (1849-1926) in Washington, DC in October 1872 and they had a son Arthur Bentley Shelton (1873-1954).
Thanks to Jim Buchanan for the poke to look further into Charles.
Birth
2/1843; Boston, MA
Death
09/20/1913; Catonsville, MD; burial in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA
1 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Adjutant General, Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War, 8 Vols, Norwood (MA): Norwood Press, 1931-35, Vol. II, pp. 72 - 130 [AotW citation 2902]
2 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served During the Mexican War for the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and in Mormon Battalion, Record Group No. 94, Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1780-1917 [AotW citation 29924]
3 Nelson, John H., As Grain Falls Before the Reaper: The Federal Hospital Sites and Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Hagerstown: John H. Nelson, 2004, p. 383 [AotW citation 29925]