Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Alonzo Stephen Case

Alonzo Stephen Case was born 1839 in Penfield, Monroe County, New York, the son of Stephen (b. 1800) and Rachel (b. 1803).

Alonzo’s parents were married sometime before 1829, probably in New York where they were both born and where they lived for some years before emigrating westward. The family settled in Michigan sometime between 1842 and 1845, and by 1850 Alonzo’s family was living in Coldwater, Branch County where Stephen worked as a farmer and Alonzo attended school with his siblings.

Alonzo stood 6’0” with blue eyes, auburn hair and a fair complexion, and was a 23-year-old farmer possibly living in Vermontville, Eaton County or perhaps in Lowell, Kent County when he enlisted in Company G on March 17, 1862, at Lowell for 3 years, crediting Lowell, and was mustered the same day. (He was possibly related to Edward Case who had enlisted in Company G in 1861.) Alonzo soon joined the Regiment in Virginia.

It seems that Alonzo had been slightly wounded, probably sometime in late April of early May, and probably near Yorktown or Williamsburg, Virginia. Frank Siverd of Company G, wrote to the editor of the Lansing Republican on May 2, 1862, that Alonzo had recently been “grazed on the arm by fragments of a shell.” In any event, Alonzo was reported to be on sick leave in Michigan as of June 1, and by August was listed as sick in a hospital. In fact he had returned to Michigan and was probably at his home in Vermontville at the end of August when he applied for an extension of his furlough. The examining physician, Dr. Lane, certified that Case was “laboring under an attack of bilious fever and very much debilitated from diseases contracted whilst in the South. Since which time he has not been able to travel but a short distance at a time. He is still unfit for duty and probably will be for some time to come, [and he] was threatened only a few days ago with pneumonia & inflammation of the bowels.”

It is unclear whether Alonzo ever rejoined the regiment that year or the next. He was reported as a deserter on September 21, 1862, at Upton’s Hill, Virginia, and again the following year, on August 9, 1863, at Alexandria, Virginia. Alonzo was recorded as residing at Detroit Barracks, when he married Mary E. Misner (b. 1847) at Lowell on June 21, 1863.

Alonzo eventually returned to the Regiment, probably sometime after the first of the year, and reenlisted on March 18, 1864, at Camp Bullock, Virginia, crediting Lowell, and was mustered on March 21 near Culpeper, Virginia. He was presumably absent on thirty day’s veteran’s furlough, probably in Michigan, and if so he likely returned to the regiment on or about the first of May. He was transferred to Company F, Fifth Michigan infantry as a Musician upon consolidation of the Third and Fifth Michigan Regiments on June 10, 1864, and from May through June was on detached service.

Alonzo was killed in action on October 27, 1864, while the Regiment was engaged at Boydton Plank road, Virginia, and was presumably buried among the unknown soldiers near Petersburg, Virginia.

In 1865 his widow applied for and received pension no. 58,984. In 1882 she remarried one George James or Janes in Ovid, Clinton County.

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