16th Connecticut private survived Antietam, POW camps

Veteran Augustus Funck, who survived Antietam and POW camps, posed for this photo
 in his hometown of Bristol, Conn.  (Connecticut State Library archives)

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Sporting a thick, gray mustache, Augustus H. Funck appeared confident as he posed in his hometown of Bristol, Conn., for a cabinet card image early in the 20th century. The 16th Connecticut veteran was one of the wealthiest men in town, having turned his father's furniture and undertaking business into a fortune -- a fabulous achievement for the "poor German boy" who immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1846.

"He worked harder than anybody else in the business for years," The Hartford Daily Courant noted in 1911, "and the success of the big enterprise was due to no one else but himself."

Funck probably learned a lot about grit and determination during the Civil War, when he faced more than his share of hardship. A carpenter as a civilian, he enlisted with his brother Henry on July 22, 1862, his 26th birthday. Less than a month later, Private Funck was wounded in the foot at Antietam, one of more than 200 casualties in his regiment in the 40-Acre Cornfield. Nineteen months later, he and his brother were captured with nearly their entire regiment at Plymouth, N.C., and sent to POW camps. Funck spent four months in Andersonville and five more months in captivity in Florence, S.C., where Henry died, before he was paroled.

After the war, Funck was married twice (his first wife died in 1883) and raised eight children, eagerly participated in local Grand Army of the Republic events and served as jailer in Bristol. In 1910, veterans of Funck's Company K celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary to his second wife by giving the couple a silver bread tray that was inscribed with a reference to his service in the 16th Connecticut.  The undertaking business that he jump-started in the late-19th century remains active to this day in Bristol.

A defender of family honor, Funck legally dropped the "c" from his last name shortly before his death in 1911 to "prevent mischievous corruption of the company name by less-than-savory characters who hung around the railroad depot across the street." The veteran's grave may be found in Bristol's West Cemetery, near the final resting places for many of his 16th Connecticut comrades.

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