26 year old Corporal John Yates was killed at Antietam on 17 September 1862. This (slightly damaged) photograph was probably taken in the Spring of 1861 soon after he enlisted in the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry in Racine.
I found this copy in a goldmine of a book called Racine County Militant: An Illustrated Narrative of War Times, and a Soldiers’ Roster (1915). It’s online from the Internet Archives (and others) and includes some 200 mostly war-era portrait photographs of Racine soldiers, most far nicer than this one of Corporal Yates. I’ll be going back to it again in the future.
Thanks to John Banks for starting me down the path to this photograph and to Shannon Cheney and Gina Radandt at the Kenosha Civil War Museum for sharing a version of this photo from their collection that led to Racine Militant.
Private Jasper Stanford Harris of the 16th Connecticut Infantry survived combat at Antietam in 1862 and imprisonment at Andersonville in 1864 and went on to have a long, ordinary, and one hopes peaceful life. He lived 87 years and was still working his small home farm and painting the neighbor’s houses at 77 in 1920.
Here he is in a photograph probably taken shortly after he enlisted in the 16th Connecticut Infantry in late July 1862. It was contributed to his Find-a-grave memorial by Micki Dischinger.
Private Jason Ebenezer Twiss, Company I, 16th Connecticut Infantry was 30 years old when he was killed at Antietam on 17 September 1862. He left a widow, Augusta, and 5 year old son Frederick. His second son Robert was born about two months after the battle.
This photograph was likely taken about the time of his enlistment in August 1862 and is from the FamilySearch database.
As you probably know, nearly all 1890 United States Census records were destroyed in a fire in 1921 leaving a permanent information gap familiar to historians and genealogists. Not so familiar, I expect, are a set of special veteran’s schedules the Bureau collected during the 1890 Census, most of which survived.
This Special Schedule was particularly valuable to me in learning about a mystery soldier of the 16th Connecticut Infantry.
He enlisted as Lewis Bulgick, a Private in Company H in August 1862, was wounded at Antietam on 17 September, and was discharged from the service for disability in February 1863.
I spent quite a bit of time trying to learn more about Private Bulgick, with little luck. Other regimental researchers before me have had this same problem – all the way back to his fellow veterans in the 1890s. I found a little for him in Massachusetts records of the 1860s and 70s, but nothing about his ancestry, birth, or death.
Then I stumbled upon a page of the 1890 Special Schedule for Southbridge, MA. Here it is (click to enlarge):
There on row 35 is the key: he also used the alias Louis Bolduc, his birth name, it turns out. With that I was easily able to find his Québécois parents and 17 (!) siblings, birth and death information, the works. Very satisfying.
I do not know why he used the Bulgick name instead of the one he was born with – but I believe he consciously chose it, it’s not just a phonetic mis-transcription: in addition to enlisting as Bulgick, he also gave that name to the 1860 and 1870 census enumerators and the Massachusetts towns where some of his 8 or more babies were born. Some of his children seem to have later used Bulgick (or variations) and some Bolduc.
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For much more detail about the history of the 1890 Special Schedule, see First in the Path of the Firemen by Kelee Blake in the National Archives’ journal Prologue for Spring 1996.
This fine photograph was contributed to John Henry Burnham‘s memorial by Chris Van Blargan. It was taken in Hartford, CT by Bartlett & Webster, probably soon after he was commissioned in August 1862.
Burnham was Adjutant of the 16th Connecticut Infantry at Antietam on 17 September 1862, and had the sad task of accounting for the field burials of the soldiers of the regiment who were killed there.
