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E.L. Dexter
(1835 - 1889)
Home State: Massachusetts
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was a 25 year old gardener in Roxbury, MA. He enlisted and mustered at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor on 16 July as a Private in Company B, 13th Massachusetts Infantry. He was sick in a hospital in Alexandria, VA from June to 15 August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was wounded by a gunshot to his right knee in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was treated at the Academy Hospital in Chambersburg, PA, was captured there by Confederate raiders, and paroled on 11 October. He was discharged for disability in Boston on 6 December 1862: his leg shortened making it difficult for him to walk. The bullet had not been removed.
After the War
In 1870 he was a clerk in a hardware store in Elgin, IL but at his death in 1889 he was working in a watch factory there.
References & notes
His service from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. Wound detail also from Nelson.3 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860 & 1870. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture, from a Company B photo album in Scott D Hann's collection, was published in the September/October 2002 issue of Military Images magazine.
He married Scottish-born Jennie Jane Barckley (1841-1909) in March 1869 and they had 2 children.
Birth
08/12/1835; Saint Albans, ME
Death
08/27/1889; Elgin, IL; burial in Bluff City Cemetery, Elgin, IL
1 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Adjutant General, Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War, 8 Vols, Norwood (MA): Norwood Press, 1931-35, Vol. 2, pp. 79 - 84 [AotW citation 6889]
2 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Soldiers who served in US Volunteer organizations enlisted for service during the Civil War, Record Group No. 94 (Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 34711]
3 Nelson, John H., As Grain Falls Before the Reaper: The Federal Hospital Sites and Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Hagerstown: John H. Nelson, 2004, p. 188 [AotW citation 34712]