William Greenough White

Son of the late Ferdinand E White (1788-1853), a prominent Boston merchant, William was a 21 year old accountant in Boston when he enrolled and mustered on 26 June 1861 at Fort Warren as First Lieutenant of Company A, 12th Massachusetts Infantry. He was in a hospital sick in July and August 1862, but left to join his company at Manassas about 28 August. He fell out by the end of the day and was sent to a hospital in Washington, DC. Still not fully recovered, he had "again broken away from his keepers" and returned to his regiment at Antietam on 16 September.

He was wounded three times; in the foot, arm, and mortally, in the hip and abdomen, in action in Miller's Cornfield at Antietam early on 17 September 1862. He was treated by Surgeon Hayward but died late that afternoon at a field hospital on the Samuel Poffenberger Farm.

His service from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3, also as W. Greenough White; both have him killed outright at Antietam. Further details from Private George Kimball as published in the Gaff's A Corporal's Story: Civil War Recollections of the Twelfth Massachusetts (2014); thanks to Andy Cardinal. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs, Library of Congress.

See a very fine rendition of the story of Lieutenant White and the 12th Massachusetts at Antietam, drawing on Corporal Kimball's Recollections, by Andy Cardinal via the Civil War Talk forum.

04/13/1840; Boston, MA

09/17/1862; Sharpsburg, MD; burial in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA