behind AotW

This is Private Hugh Gallagher‘s Certificate of Disability for Discharge drafted 10 February 1863 at the US Army General Hospital in Baltimore, MD. It’s from his Compiled Service Records now in the National Archives (this copy online from fold3).

Private Gallagher was in Company E, 21st Massachusetts Infantry and was wounded in action at Fox’s Gap on 14 September 1862 and again at Fredericksburg, VA on 13 December. He lost a finger as a result and was discharged to go home on 11 March 1863.

20 year old Corporal Edward F Powell of the 5th North Carolina Infantry was grievously wounded in the face in combat near Fox’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862. He spent the rest of the war in Virginia and North Carolina hospitals, as a patient and later a nurse. This fine portrait photograph (c. 1861) is from the Liljenquist Family Collection at the Library of Congress.

Thanks to Great-great Grandson Josh Powell for the poke this evening to look into his ancestor and for another picture of Edward, below, taken many years later. Josh notes that Edward “kept a beard following his service to help cover the scars from the wounds he received.”

That’s the stone in the Antietam National Cemetery under which Sergeant Henry Smith of Company K, 2nd United States Infantry is likely buried.

The Cemetery History says he’s Sgt. Henry Smith of Company K, 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, and “Wis.” is written on the headstone. There are no certainties in these matters, but I’m fairly sure that’s wrong.

There is no Sergeant Henry Smith in the State roster for Company K (or any Company) of the 2nd Wisconsin. There were two Henry Smiths in the regiment, neither a casualty at Antietam: one, in Co. K, transferred out to the heavy artillery in December 1861 and mustered out in 1865; the other, of Co. H, lived to 1918 and is buried in Oregon.

But there are pretty good enlistment and medical records for Sergeant Henry Smith of the 2nd US who was wounded at Antietam. By way of example, here the entry for him in the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (MSHWR, 1870).

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The headstone photograph was contributed to his memorial on Findagrave by Sandy Boyd.

The History of Antietam National Cemetery (1869) is online in an excellent exhibit from WHILBR – by the Western Maryland Regional Library. The image here is of page 164.

The MSHWR is online from the National Library of Medicine at NIH in Bethesda, MD. The image above is from Volume 2, Part 3, page 535.

Dublin-born William J Leahy was seriously wounded in the thigh at Antietam on 17 September 1862 while serving as 2nd Lieutenant of Company C, 2nd United States Sharpshooters. As a result, he resigned his commission and went home in January 1863.

Here he is as Sheriff of Clinton County, PA in 1887 from a pamphlet titled The Colby Tragedy (1888) about a sensational local murder case.

This is him later in life from W.J. McKnight’s Jefferson County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People, 1800-1915 (Vol. II, 1917).

From the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (MSHWR, Volume 2, Part 3, page 293), a list of 676 cases of Intermediary Amputations in the Lower Third of the Femur for Shot Fracture performed by Army surgeons during the war. Intermediary meaning the amputations were done some days or weeks after the injury was received. Of the 676, 217 soldiers recovered but 459 died of their wounds or from the surgery.

One of these soldiers was James Kelly of the 2nd United States Infantry. From County Roscommon in Ireland, he’d enlisted in St. Louis in 1858 at age 22, and was a Corporal by 1862.

In action at Antietam on 17 September 1862 he was shot in his lower left leg, the bullet grazing his tibia. He was initially treated on or near the battlefield and was in a hospital in Frederick, MD by the 27th, but infection apparently traveled up his leg past the knee, and his leg was amputated at the lower thigh on 16 October. The surgery didn’t save him and he died on 21 October 1862.

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All 6 books of the MSHWR are online thanks to NIH’s National Library of Medicine.

Charles R. Kay was a Private in Company G, 2nd United States Sharpshooters and was wounded on South Mountain on 14 or 15 September 1862. He was discharged in 1863 and returned home to New Hampshire, where he worked in a sawmill, married twice, and raised 10 children. He’s seen here considerably post-war in a photo from family genealogist Sylvia Ann Kay Johnson.

Here’s Septimus Cobb in a carte-de-visite offered by the Excelsior Brigade‘s online shop. He was wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862 while 2nd Lieutenant of Company C, 42nd New York Infantry.

James D Loades was a Sergeant in Company I of the 2nd Maryland Infantry when he was wounded in the side, probably near the Lower (Burnside’s) Bridge over the Antietam on 17 September 1862.

This photograph was taken in Paris, KY, probably in the Spring of 1863, soon after Loades was appointed Sergeant-Major of the regiment. It is offered for sale online by the Excelsior Brigade.

This lovely thing is the packet ship Dewitt Clinton of New York departing Liverpool, an 1865 painting by English maritime artist Samuel Walters offered at auction by Bonhams in January 2011.

James Fegan was aboard her on a passage from Liverpool to New York City in 1850. From Athlone, he’d been a policeman in the Royal Irish Constabulary before emigrating, and enlisted in the 2nd United States Infantry soon after arriving in America. He was a Sergeant by 1856 and was wounded at Antietam in 1862, but he survived the war and another 20 years of US Army service to retire in 1885.

He was awarded a Medal of Honor for singlehandedly fighting off “a party of desperadoes” – his fellow soldiers – and getting a powder train through to Fort Dodge, KS in March 1868.

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From the New York Times of 10 March 1860:

The wreck of the DeWitt Clinton.; THE PASSENGERS SAVED AND BROUGHT TO THIS CITY.

During the severe gale and snow storm which prevailed on Thursday, the packet-ship De Witt Clinton, bound from Liverpool to New York, went ashore on the New Jersey coast, eight miles below the village of Squan. The vessel contained a valuable cargo, and carried a large number of passengers. Information was speedily conveyed by signals to the shore, but the remoteness of the point from the life-saving apparatus, and the sparseness of the population, prevented any active measures. Fortunately, the steamship Quaker City, on her voyage hither from Havana, observed the vessel, and hailed and dispatched the steamtug Jacob Bell, which proceeded at once to the rescue. The Clinton was found to have bilged, but was lying very easily, and there was reason to believe that she might be saved after discharging a portion of her cargo. The passengers were all taken off by the pilot-boat Christian Bergh (No. 13) which came up opportunely, and last evening reached Quarantine in safety.

The Dewitt Clinton, Capt. DUNN, was built in this City in 1848, by Messrs. PERINE, PATT & SONS. She was of 1,079 tons burden and of 20 feet draft. Messrs. H.L. RICH & Co. are the owners of the vessel, which ranked as A 1-1/2.

Mexican War veteran Robert Davis was a Sergeant in Company I, 2nd United States Infantry when he was wounded in action near the Middle Bridge at Antietam on 17 September 1862. His c. 1865 photograph was posted to his Findagrave memorial by Jeffry Burden.