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P.J. Rooney
(1838 - 1917)
Home State: Massachusetts
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
Son of an Irish-born shoemaker, in 1860 he was a 22 year old clerk living with his parents and 2 younger brothers in Boston, MA. He enlisted there on 22 April 1861 and mustered at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor on 16 July as a Private in Company B, 13th Massachusetts Infantry.
On the Campaign
He was wounded in the leg in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was treated at the Academy Hospital in Chambersburg, PA and was captured there by Confederate raiders, and paroled on 11 October. He was discharged to date from 30 November 1862 and enlisted at Carlisle, PA as a Private in Company K, First United States Cavalry on 1 December. He was discharged on 14 February 1864, by then Quartermaster Sergeant, and was commissioned First Lieutenant of Company F of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, a unit of US Colored Troops, to date from 2 February. He was promoted to Captain and transferred to Company H on 8 March 1864 and was discharged on 31 October 1865 at Clarksville, TX.
After the War
In 1870 he was a clerk in a Boston dry goods store, again living with his parents. He was admitted to the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at Togus, ME on 15 March 1887. He was a resident there to March 1888 and again from October 1889 to October 1891. He began receiving a veteran's pension for disability in August 1892 and by 1900 and to at least 1910 was a clerk in City Hall in Boston.
References & notes
His service from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,1 his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3, and the Registers of Enlistments.3 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860, 1870, 1900, and 1910, the Registers of the National Home,4 and his Pension Card, also online from fold3. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from one of a pair of c. 1864 photographs offered by Fleischer's Auctions in June 2026; thanks to Dave Lay for the pointer to those.
He married German-born divorcé Harriet Ford (c. 1865-) in September 1899 in Manhattan, NY. She began collecting a widows pension in May 1932.
More on the Web
A photograph of Rooney as a Private, from a regimental photo album in Scott D Hann's collection, was published in the September/October 2002 issue of Military Images magazine.
Birth
06/1838; Boston, MA
Death
11/06/1917; Dorchester, MA; burial in Saint Joseph Cemetery, West Roxbury, MA
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 6895]
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 34697]
3 US Army, Registers of Enlistments in the United States Army, 1798-1914, Washington, DC: National Archives, 1956, Vol. 142, p. 814 [AotW citation 34698]
4 US Department of Veterans Affairs, Registers of the United States National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers 1866-1938, Washington, DC: US National Archives and Records Administration, 1938, Reg. # 6055 [AotW citation 34699]
