Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Henry M. Heustis

Henry M. Heustis was born in 1838 in Cayuga County, New York.

Henry left New York and came to western Michigan sometime before the war broke out.

He stood 5’4” with blue eyes, dark hair and a light complexion, and was 22-year-old farmer possibly living in Kent County when he enlisted in Company D on May 13, 1861. He was sick or wounded in the hospital from July through September of 1862, and according Captain Moses B. Houghton, commanding Company D, Henry had “been awaiting his discharge since February past and has done no duty during that period having been at some general hospital during that time from an attack of syphilis.” Assistant Regimental surgeon Walter Morrison performed the discharge examination on Heustis and noted “secondary syphilis contracted about one year ago [and] he had been unfit to perform the duties of a soldier for the last three months.”

Henry was in fact discharged for secondary syphilis on October 6, 1862, at Upton’s Hill, Virginia.

There is no further record.

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