Andrew Melvin Benson

From Oldtown, he enlisted as a Sergeant in Company C, 7th Maine Infantry on 22 August 1861. He was First Sergeant by September 1862.

He was slightly wounded in the hip in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

He was commissioned First Lieutenant and transferred to Company K to date from 18 September 1862. In January 1864 he was appointed Captain of Company C, First District of Columbia Cavalry, but then took a commission as Captain of Company C, First Maine Cavalry on 15 February.

He was captured at Stoney Creek, VA on 29 June 1864 and was a prisoner at Macon, Ga, then Columbia, SC. He escaped from Columbia in December 1864 and returned to his Company, and mustered out with them on 1 August 1865 at Petersburg, VA.

By 1870 he was a retail lumber dealer in Portland, ME. He was still in that business and living at 5 Victoria Street in Boston at when he died from a bleeding stomach ulcer at about age 68 in 1905.

His wounding from Hyde,1, with service details from the Maine Adjutant General.2 His photograph here from a CDV at the Maine State Archives3. Personal details from family genealogists, his death record, and the US Census of 1870. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Mary Clapp Robinson (1843-1896) in February 1865.

See a brief description of his role in the afternoon attack of the 7th Maine Infantry at Antietam on 17 September 1862, from Company B First Sergeant John McKenney. It's over on the blog.

There are at least three photographs of him in the Digital Maine Repository.

03/23/1835; Parkman, ME

03/19/1905; Boston, MA; burial in Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, ME