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Federal (USV)

Private

Joshua Jones

(1838 - 1862)

Home State: Indiana

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 19th Indiana Infantry

Before Antietam

From Delaware County, IN, he mustered as Private, Company E, 19th Indiana Infantry on 29 July 1861.

On the Campaign

He was mortally wounded by gunshot which "shattered" his "leg bones" in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862. Lieutenant Greene later described it:

... our Reg't. was making a charge on the rebels - and when they had got within the rebel lines - he was struck by a musket ball, taking effect in right leg - just above the ancle - breaking and literally shivering the bone to attoms, being too severely wounded to get back off of the field himself and the rebels were in too strong numbers at this point - our Regiment had to fall back a short distance - leaving the dead and wounded in the hands of the rebels. They took him back into their lines where he remained without any attention being paid to his wound from Wednesday morning - the time when he was wounded - until Friday afternoon when the rebels evaccuated their position. At this time our boys went over and found him and brought him back but his wound was so sore by this time that he could not bear to be hauled in the ambulance - so they carried him to the Hospital on a stretcher - for such purposes - a distance of three or four miles ...

The rest of the War

He was treated at a field hospital near Keedysville, MD, where his leg was amputated below the knee, but he died of his wounds there on 28 September 1862. He was reinterred from his original burial on the field to the National Cemetery during or before 1867.

References & notes

Burial information from the Antietam Cemetery History,1 which has him as Joseph Jones. Service from the Adjutant General.2 Wound detail from Nelson.3 His gravesite is on Findagrave, as Corporal.

His letters, and letters about him, were published in "absent so long from those I love": The Civil War Letters of Joshua Jones by Eugene H. Berwanger in the Indiana Magazine of History (September 1992); source also of the quote above.

Joshua left his widow Celia Driscoll Jones (1841-1929) and young son George (1860-1936).

Birth

1838

Death

09/28/1862; Keedysville, MD; burial in Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, MD

Notes

1   Antietam National Cemetery, Board of Trustees, History of Antietam National Cemetery, Baltimore: John W. Woods, Steam Printer, 1869  [AotW citation 3692]

2   State of Indiana, Adjutant General's Office, and William H.H. Terrell, Adjutant General, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, 8 volumes, Indianapolis: (various) State Printers, 1865-1869, Vol. 4, pg. 398  [AotW citation 20669]

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, pg. 266  [AotW citation 20670]