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F.M. Barber

F.M. Barber

Federal (USV)

Captain

Frederick Martiner Barber

(1830 - 1862)

Home State: Connecticut

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 16th Connecticut Infantry

Before Antietam

Age 32, he enrolled in Manchester on 1 August 1862 and was commissioned and mustered as Captain, Company H, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 24 August.

On the Campaign

He was mortally wounded by a gunshot to his right hip in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He was taken to the 3rd Division, Ninth Corps field hospital near Sharpsburg. The next day he had surgery:

Surgeon Melancthon Storrs, 8th Connecticut Volunteers, proceeded to make a straight incision four inches long passing through the wound of entrance. The comminuted fragments of the neck and trochanter were extracted, the round ligament was divided, the head of the femur was removed, and the fractured upper extremity of the shaft was sawn off by the chain saw. The edges of the wound were then approximated by adhesive straps and simple dressings were applied. But little blood was lost, and the patient rallied promptly from the operation, and appeared quite comfortable during the day.
Although the operation seemed successful, "surgical fever set in" and he died two days later on 20 September 1862.

References & notes

Basic information from Ingersoll1, who says he was killed outright on 17 September, with burial detail from John Banks. Wound and hospital details from Otis.2 His gravesite is on Findagrave. Burial details and his picture, from a photograph in the Scott Hann collection, are from John Banks in a post on his Civil War blog.

He married Mercy Wrisley (1830-1917) and they had a daughter Charlotte Gertrude (1857-1875).

More on the Web

The "standard-bearer" - a stone memorial to Barber and the soldiers of Galstonbury - is on Glastonbury Green near the cemetery.

Birth

1830; East Hartford, CT

Death

09/20/1862; Sharpsburg, MD; burial in Green Cemetery, Glastonbury, 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 5573]

2   Otis, George Alexander, A Report on Excisions of the Head of the Femur for Gunshot Injury, Washington: US Army, Office of the Surgeon General, 1869, pg. 22  [AotW citation 23334]