Horatio N. FISH, Jr.

Horatio N. FISH, Jr., a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

"Christ First, Then My Country"

Placed next to his father, this headstone is not one that is military issued even though he died in the service to his country. Horatio Nelson Fish, Jr. was the only boy in his family.  This tells me his family could afford a special headstone. There were three surviving sisters. A close-up of the verse is here.

Fold3 holds his Civil War Record of service which shows that the information on his gravestone is correct. 

Mustered in 5 Sept, 1862, Horatio was a member of the 21st Connecticut Regiment, Company C Infantry Volunteers. He died 8 July 1864 in Hampton Hospital in Fort Monroe, Virginia at the age of 21 years. Listed on the document below is his gunshot fracture and exhaustion as cause of death. 

I located a Web site called Civil War Manuscripts with information about Connecticut men who served. 

From Civil War manuscripts is this information:

"an unmarried farmer, enlisted on 25 July 1862 and was mustered-in on 5 September 1862. He was wounded at Drewry’s Bluff, VA, on 16 May 1864 and again at Petersburg, VA, on 18 July 1864. He died on 8 August 1864 from the wound received at Petersburg." 

This valuable piece of information tells us where he was wounded prior to Petersburg and and that he died of the second wound which was the one at Petersburg. I couldn't reconcile the dates until I found the information specific for Connecticut.

His mother collected his pension as he was single when he died. His pension card is at Fold3.

His cause of death was recorded in a database that I had not used before since my serving Civil War vets did not die in service:

Ancestry.com Clip of  Register of Deaths

Rest in Peace, Horatio N. Fish, Jr.

Ancestry.com. U.S., Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, 1861-1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Original data:

Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, compiled 1861–1865. ARC: 656639. Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780's–1917. Record Group 94. The National Archives at Washington, D.C.

From Linda Woody, here's what he looked like!