Calvin B. Holmes

Calvin B. Holmes was born in 1831 in Carthage, Jefferson County, New York, the son of Calvin and Sylva.

In 1850 there was a 20-year-old Calvin Holmes working as a farmer for the Whiting family in Cazenovia, Madison County, New York.

Calvin (younger) was married to New York native Mary (b. 1829), on August 16, 1851 in Caznovia, Madison County, New York, and they had at least three children: Amelia E. (b. 1853), Kittie E. (b. 1857) and Grace (b. 1863).

Calvin and his wife had settled in New York by 1854, but sometime between 1854 and 1858 Calvin took his family and moved to Michigan. By 1860 he was working as a farmer and living with his wife and children on a farm in Watertown, Clinton County.

He stood 5’9” with blue eyes, brown hair and a light complexion and was a 31-year-old farmer probably living in Watertown when he enlisted in Company G on August 11, 1862, at Detroit, crediting Watertown. He joined the Regiment on September 3 at Upton’s Hill, Virginia, and, according to Edgar Clark, also of Company G, Holmes was a nurse in the regimental hospital as early as December of 1862. Clark added that “He gets $21 a month” and a good place to live. “I don’t see how he got it, being a new recruit, but he was sick in the hospital here and visited the sick and that is the way he got in. He makes a good nurse. There is a good many in the company that would like this position but for the extra pay, myself for one, though it is a good deal harder than to be a soldier.”

Calvin was reported as a Regimental hospital nurse from October of 1863 through March of 1864, and was a Corporal when he was severely wounded in the left leg on May 6, 1864, at the Wilderness, Virginia. He died of his wounds on May 16 at Fredericksburg, Virginia, and presumably buried among the unknown soldiers at Fredericksburg.

In 1864 Mary was living in Lansing when she applied for and received a widow’s pension (no. 50799). In 1868 she married Thomas Sturges and subsequently applied for and received a pension on behalf of her minor children (no. 125835).