Soldier snapshot: 16th Connecticut private Robert Morgan

Private Robert P. Morgan's brownstone memorial in Granby (Conn.) Cemetery.
Photo: Karen Phillips Miller

This document in Morgan's pension file notes that he was married
to Mariah Goodrich on Jan. 19, 1858 in Rocky Hill, Conn.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

It's always nice to breathe a little life back into the story of a long-forgotten Civil War soldier. Thanks to blog reader Karen, who supplied a photo of 16th Connecticut private Robert P. Morgan's brownstone memorial in a cemetery in Granby, Conn., and a quick dive into Morgan's pension records, we know a little more about the soldier who died a week after he was wounded at the Battle of Antietam. In September 1862, Morgan was the married father of two young children, Lillious, 3; and Anna, almost 7 months. He and his wife, Mariah, were married at the Congregational Church in Rocky Hill, Conn., on Jan. 19, 1858, when he was 21 and she was 17. Robert enlisted in the Union army on July 19, 1862, mustering in with Company E of the 16th Connecticut in Hartford on Aug. 24, 1862. At Antietam, Morgan was wounded in John Otto's 40-acre cornfield and taken to a nearby makeshift field hospital with scores of other wounded and dying men. According to an affidavit signed by 16th Connecticut surgeon Abner S. Warner, Morgan died at the "hospital near stone bridge," probably a reference to either the Henry Rohrbach or Otto farms. Soldiers from his regiment were treated at the houses and barns at both locations a short distance from Burnside Bridge. After the war, Morgan's remains were recovered and buried in the Connecticut section at Antietam National Cemetery, grave No. 1,102. Mariah remarried in 1875 and again in 1896, after her second husband died. For more on Connecticut Antietam deaths, check out my Excel spreadsheet that includes soldier, regiment, company, date of death, family, final resting place and much more.

Wounded at the Battle of Antietam, Morgan died at "hospital near stone bridge," according
to this document signed by 16th Connecticut surgeon Abner S. Warner.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)