Romaine Ballard Hart

In 1860 he was a 15 year old farm boy on his widowed mother Cornelia's place at Monroe in Webster County, NY. On 27 July 1862, giving his age as 18 (he was only just 17), he enlisted in Rochester as a Private in Company B, 108th New York Infantry.

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

He was discharged for disability from his wound on 8 December 1862. He was probably a civilian teamster in the Department of the Cumberland in Tennessee for the latter part of 1863, then enlisted again on 9 December 1863 in Webster. He was mustered as Sergeant, Company H, 22nd New York Cavalry on 2 February 1864.

During his service with the calvary, he met with a thrilling experience, by the explosion of an ammunition wagon, which was in close proximity, throwing him several rods, and were it not for his landing in a pond of water, the fall would have undoubtedly killed him. By careful treatment in hospital, he was again restored to duty

He returned to his mother's place in Monroe, NY and was in school into the Spring of 1866, but then went to Illinois and on to Medina County, OH. By 1870 he was working in a cheese factory (probably his father-in-law's business) at Spencer in Medina County, OH. He first began to receive a veteran's invalid pension in 1874 and by 1880 was farming his own place in LaFayette Township in Medina County. In 1900 he was in the village of Medina and was the Postmaster and County Recorder. He'd finally retired there by 1910. He died in the German (now Fairview) Hospital in Cleveland in 1913, age 68.

Service information from the State of New York.1 Antietam wound detail from Nelson.2 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1910, the New York Census of 1865, and a bio sketch in History of Medina County and Ohio (1881); source of the quote above. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Thanks to Kathy Jerrow for the pointer to his bio and for his photograph (c. 1864).

He married Matilda Jane Inman (1847-1928) in November 1866 in her hometown of Spencer in Medina County, and they had 6 daughters. Her family had gone from Monroe, NY to Ohio in 1831.

06/30/1845; Webster, NY

10/25/1913; Cleveland, OH; burial in Spring Grove Cemetery, Medina, OH