site logo
B. Burr

B. Burr

Federal (USV)

Private

Bela Lewellyn Burr

(1844 - 1908)

Home State: Connecticut

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 16th Connecticut Infantry

Before Antietam

In 1860 he was a 16 year old working on his widowed mother's farm in Haddam, CT. He enlisted as a Private in Company G, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 7 August 1862, credited to Farmington, CT.

On the Campaign

He was wounded in the ankle and shin in action on 17 September 1862 at Antietam. His brother Francis was also wounded, but he died of his wounds in October.

The rest of the War

Bela was found on the battlefield 48 hours afterward and initially treated at the Otto Barn. He was moved to US Army General Hospital #4 in Frederick, MD on 1 October 1862 then transferred to Knight General Hospital in New Haven, CT on 2 March. He was discharged for disability on 23 November 1863.

After the War

He was "associated with" the Springfield (MA) Daily Union by 1878 and was a journalist in Vernon, Tolland County, CT by 1880. He was a printer and editor at Ellington in 1900, but was a patient in the Retreat for the Insane in Hartford, CT at the time of his death in 1908.

References & notes

Service information from Ingersoll1 and the Record.2 Frederick hospital details from the Patient List.3 Personal details from family genealogists, notably Charles Burr Todd in A General History of the Burr Family in America (1878), and the US Census of 1860-1900, with his middle name from Gordon.4 His gravesite is on Findagrave; his stone has his birth in 1845. His picture from a photograph in the collection of the Connecticut State Library, kindly provided by John Banks.

He married Sarah E "Satie" Leach (1849-1915) in November 1869.

More on the Web

See more about Burr and his Antietam wound in a fine blog post from John Banks.

Birth

06/10/1844; Haddam, CT

Death

04/29/1908; burial in Grove Hill Cemetery, Rockville, CT

Notes

1   Ingersoll, Colin Macrae, Adjutant-General, Catalogue of Connecticut Volunteer Organizations in the Service of the United States, 1861-1865, Hartford: Brown & Gross, 1869, pp. 656 - 663  [AotW citation 5559]

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. 632  [AotW citation 27174]

3   National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and Terry Reimer, Frederick Patient List, Published 2018, first accessed 17 September 2018, <http://www.civilwarmed.org/explore/primary-sources/databases/frederickpatient/>, Source page: patient #1.352, 590  [AotW citation 27175]

4   Gordon, Lesley J., 16th CV [Connecticut Volunteers] database [roster], Published 2014, first accessed 06 February 2022, <https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=D0B38CB5864DA66C!107&authkey=!ACNE422k47Tnc_Q&ithint=file%2cxl>  [AotW citation 27262]