Peter Kop

A 26 year old railroad conductor from Bloomington, he was commissioned Captain of Company F, 27th Indiana Infantry on 30 August 1861. He was 6 feet, four and one half inches tall. He was wounded in action at Winchester, VA on 25 May 1862.

He was mortally wounded in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862 ...

... later in the day, when the exposure was considerable from overshots ... The circumstances attending it were an illustration, both of the curious way casualties may come in battle and of their curious effects. The Captain had passed through the extreme exposure of the morning untouched. It is not unreasonable to suppose that many bullets were then fired at him directly, at short range, without any of them hitting him; but now he falls by a stray bullet, not fired at him at all.

Another curious circumstance was that when first hit he supposed the injury was in his lower limbs. He exclaimed, apparently in great pain, that both of his legs were broken. As he was being carried to an ambulance, what was the surprise of all to see him suddenly rise up and walk? The wound was really in his body, but the spinal column had been injured.

He died of his wound on 24 September 1862 at a field hospital in Keedysville, near Sharpsburg. He was reinterred from his original burial in Keedysville to the National Cemetery during or before 1867.

Death and burial information from the Antietam Cemetery History1. Service data, the quote above, and the photo here from Brown,2 who has him as Peter Kopp, and the Historical Data Systems database. Hospital detail from Nelson.3 His gravesite is on Findagrave.

c. 1835; Etalle, Canton de Rulles, BELGIUM

09/24/1862; Keedysville, MD; burial in Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, MD