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(1841 - 1862)
Home State: Connecticut
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was an 18 year old farmer on his father's place in Barkhamsted, Litchfield County, CT; he was known as Merritt, probably to distinguish him from his father Orville. He enlisted as a Private in Company G, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 28 July 1862.
On the Campaign
He was mortally wounded by a gunshot that broke his thigh bone in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was treated in the Locust Spring field hospital on the Geeting farm near Keedysville, then transferred to the hospital at Weaverton, MD. He died of wounds there on 2 November 1862.
After the War
He was originally buried at Weaverton and reinterred in the new National Cemetery in about 1867.
References & notes
His burial from the Antietam Cemetery History.1 His service from the Record,2 as Orvil M. Wilson. Hospital and wound details from Nelson3 and a list of Cases of Gunshot fractured femurs at Battle of Antietam by Surgeon Truman Squire, 89th New York Infantry. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
Birth
11/24/1841; Lictchfield County, CT
Death
11/02/1862; Weaverton, MD; burial in Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, MD
1 Antietam National Cemetery, Board of Trustees, History of Antietam National Cemetery, Baltimore: John W. Woods, Steam Printer, 1869 [AotW citation 4366]
2 State of Connecticut, Adjutant General's Office, and AGs Smith, Camp, and Barbour, and AAG White, Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the Army and Navy of the United States during the War of the Rebellion, Hartford: Press of the Case, Lockwood, and Brainard Company, 1889, pg. 633 [AotW citation 27202]
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. 442 [AotW citation 30495]