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F.W. Palfrey
"Frank"
(1831 - 1889)
Home State: Massachusetts
Education: Harvard (1851), Harvard Law, Class of 1853
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
He was son of Unitarian minister, Harvard Divinity School professor, and former US Congressman John Gorham Palfrey (1796-1881), was admitted to the bar in 1854, and practiced in Boston before the war. In 1860 he was a 27 year old lawyer living with his parents, 3 sisters, and 3 Irish servants (cousins?) in Cambridge, MA.
He was appointed First Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion, Massachusetts Militia on 20 April 1861, and he enrolled for war service at Camp Massasoit at Readville, MA on 1 July 1861 and mustered there as Lieutenant Colonel of the 20th Massachusetts Infantry on 19 July (his commission dated 28 August).
On the Campaign
He was seriously wounded by a canister ball to his left shoulder joint in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862 and captured. Adjutant Clark of the 35th North Carolina Infantry later related:
Just after the second assault was repulsed, an officer from another part of the regiment came to Col. Ransom [commanding the 35th NC] who happened to be immediately in the rear of Co. F and told him that a wounded man some fifty yards in front of his company had given the masonic signal of distress ... [he, Palfrey] had his horse killed under him at the turnpike and he had then led his men on foot and when he was shot down at that spot some fifty yards in front of his company ...Surgeon N. Hayward of his regiment, who was also captured, removed the "shattered" head of his humerus (upper arm) bone on 18 September.
Lieutenant Howie and I being young officers nearest at hand, volunteered to go out and bring him in. When we two emerged from the edge of the woods we expected a volley, but among the enemy's skirmishers, there must have been some Masons who had heard the masonic signal of distress for, to our surprise, while the firing to the right and left was kept up, it immediately ceased in our front ...
... when we reached the spot we found an officer badly wounded in the left shoulder and arm who proved to be Col. Francis Winthrop Palfrey of the 19 [sic] Mass. Regiment who had commanded the brigade and lying by him on the ground was his Adjutant who was unwounded but who had remained to protect his Colonel which he was doing by clamping with his hand the severed artery, and it was he who had sent the masonic signal. With his aid, we brought Colonel Palfrey back, his artery was protected by a tourniquet and at the first lull in the shelling they were sent to the rear.
The rest of the War
He was promoted to Colonel on 18 December 1862 while still absent, recuperating, and resigned and was discharged for disability from wounds on 13 April 1863. He was, by that time, on light duty as President of a military court in Boston.
After the War
He was honored by brevet to Brigadier General of Volunteers on 27 June 1867 for "gallant conduct" at Antietam and for his war service, to date from 13 March 1865. By 1870 he was a lawyer in Boston, and in September 1873 a pension examiner noted his left arm was "useless for heavy manual labor." In 1880 was in Waverly, MA, probably retired from practice. He wrote extensively about his fellow soldiers and the Battle of Antietam, most notably in his book The Antietam and Fredericksburg (1881).
References & notes
His service basics from Heitman,1 Soldiers and Sailors,2 and his Compiled Service Records,3 online from fold3. The battle quote above from Clark in a piece in the Monroe, NC Journal of 14 September 1914; thanks to Laura Elliott for finding that and for sharing it on Civil War Talk. Wound and medical details from the MSHWR.4 Personal details from Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography (1887-89), John C Ropes' Memorial of Francis Winthrop Palfrey, AM in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (November 1891), family genealogists, and the US Census of 1860-1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from an 1862 photograph in the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment carte de visite album, now at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston.
He married Louisa Caroline Bartlett (1839-1897) in 1865 and they had 3 daughters.
His brother John Carver Palfrey (1833-1906; USMA 1857), was a Captain of Engineers, US Army during the Civil War, later also Brigadier General by brevet.
Birth
04/11/1831; Boston, MA
Death
12/06/1889; Cannes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, FRANCE; burial in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA
1 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, p. 766 [AotW citation 32147]
2 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Adjutant General, Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War, 8 Vols, Norwood (MA): Norwood Press, 1931-35 [AotW citation 32148]
3 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 32150]
4 Barnes, Joseph K., and US Army, Office of the Surgeon General, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 6 books, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1870-1883, Volume 2, Part 2, p. 533 [AotW citation 32149]