James Otis Ladd

In 1860 he was a 16 year old farm worker living with his parents, 8 siblings, and his grandmother Warner on the family farm at Windsor, MA. He enlisted in Worcester, MA on 4 December 1861 and mustered as a Private in Company I, 15th Massachusetts Infantry on 5 December in Boston.

He was wounded by a gunshot in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862

... when contest raged in its fiercest terror, I received a wound that dropped my right arm helpless at my side and from the cause of which I had to suffer the amputation thereof at the upper third on September 19th 1862.

He was treated at the Antietam/Smoketown field hospital near the battlefield until he was discharged for wounds on 13 January 1863.

On 29 May 1863 he enrolled as 2nd Lieutenant, Company K, First North Carolina (later 35th United States) Colored Troops and joined them at New Bern in August. He was in action with them at Olustee, FL in February 1864 and was promoted to First Lieutenant of Company E in March, but was captured aboard the steamer USS Columbine on the St. John's River in Florida on 22 May. He was a prisoner in Macon and Savannah, GA, and Charleston and Columbia, SC, where he escaped for 5 days in November 1864. He was finally paroled on 9 December 1864 and sent to Camp Parole at Annapolis, MD.

He returned to his regiment on 23 June 1865, then stationed at Summerville, SC. He served variously as acting Regimental Quartermaster and acting Assistant Adjutant General to December 1865. He was promoted to Captain of Company H on 1 April 1866, then on detached duty at the Headquarters of the Military District at Summerville. He mustered out at Charleston on 1 June 1866.

By 1870 he was a department clerk in Columbia, SC and in 1880 the US Commissioner at Cheraw in Chesterfield County, SC. By 1900 and to at least 1910 he was Postmaster in Summerville.

His service from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. Further details and the quote above from a letter of 20 December 1865 he wrote entering a left-hand penmanship contest, now at the Library of Congress. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860-1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph in the John Nau III Collection at the Bullock Museum in Austin, TX.

He married Priscilla Catherine Thouron (1845-1927) of Charleston in March 1866 and they had 5 children.

10/25/1843; Tolland, CT

05/27/1931; Summerville, SC; burial in Saint Lawrence Cemetery, Charleston, SC