Monday, December 01, 2008

Samuel A. Greenwood

Samuel A. Greenwood was born 1830 in London, England.

Samuel immigrated to America and eventually settled in Michigan.

He was married to Irish-born Mary A. (1839-1867), and they had at least two children: Susan (b. 1857) and Joseph (b. 1860).

They settled in Michigan sometime before 1857 and by 1860 Samuel was working as a farm laborer and living with his wife and two children in Greenwood (near Brockway), St. Clair County. (Neither Samuel or Mary could read or write.)

Samuel stood 5’10” with blue eyes, brown hair and a fair complexion, and was 40 or 33 years old and probably working in Sparta, Kent County when he enlisted in Company C on August 9, 1862, at Grand Rapids for 3 years, and was mustered the same day. He joined the Regiment on September 10 at Camp Bullock, Virginia, was hospitalized on February 11, 1863, and reported absent sick in the hospital from June until he was transferred to Company C, Ninth Regiment, Veterans’ Reserve Corps, on either September 30, 1863, or November 11, 1863, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

After his discharge from the army Samuel eventually returned to Michigan, probably to his family in St. Clair County (Mary died in Port Huron, St. Clair County in 1867).

Samuel eventually moved to the western side of the state and was probably living in Kent County when he married his second (?) wife Lucinda or Nancy (b. 1836), on October 22, 1868 in Algoma.

He apparently had two more children: Lottie (1868-69) and Samuel (d. 1868). He was possibly living in Algoma, Kent County, in 1868 when his son Samuel died and in 1869 when his daughter died.

In any case, Samuel was living in Algoma when he married his third (?) wife Pennsylvania native Mary “Polly” Helsel (nee Misner, b. 1828 on June 8, 1870 in Algoma.

By 1870 Samuel was working as a farm laborer and living with his new wife Polly and two sons, Joseph and Richard (b. 1867), as well as three of Polly’s children by her former marriage in Algoma, Kent County. By 1880 Samuel was working as a laborer and living with his wife, and three daughters, two of Mary’s who he had apparently adopted and Eliza Ann (b. 1871, Mrs. Stevens), in Cedar Springs, Kent County

In 1879 he applied for and received a pension (no. 242,466).

Samuel was living in Solon, Kent County in 1890, and in Cedar Springs in 1894 and probably when he joined the Old Third Michigan Infantry Association in 1899.

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