Henry Koenigsberg

Henry Koenigsberg was born in 1826 in Mecklenburg, Germany.

Henry immigrated to America sometime before the war broke out and eventually settled in western Michigan.

He was married to Elizabeth Schurr (1832-1907), and they had at least four children: William (b. 1855), Caroline (b. 1857), Henry (b. 1864), Charles (1867-1925).

He and his wife settled in Michigan sometime before 1855. He might have been the same Henry “Coonsburg” living at the Cornelius Van Dusen (?) hotel in Holland, Ottawa County.

He stood 5’10” with hazel eyes, brown hair and a dark complexion and was a 35-year-old farmer living in Holland when he enlisted in Company C on May 13, 1861. He was shot in the right leg and struck by a piece of cannon shell in the left leg and left wounded on the field at Second Bull Run on August 29, 1862. He was soon hospitalized, probably in Carver hospital in Washington, DC, and was reported as a Corporal and absent sick in a general hospital in Washington, DC from September until he was discharged on October 31, 1862, at Carver hospital for chronic, “very obstinate” ulceration of the feet and eczema.

Following his discharge Henry eventually returned to Holland.

By 1870 Henry was operating a saloon in Holland and indeed he lived in Holland for many years, and by 1880 he was working in leather and living with his wife and children in Holland’s Third Ward.

He was residing in Holland in 1883 when he was drawing $4.00 per month for wounded left and right legs (pension no. 218,380, dated September of 1882); by 1910 it had increased to $30.00. Henry was still living in Holland through 1894, and was a member of GAR Van Raalte Post No. 262 in Holland.

Henry was a widower and Protestant when admitted to the Michigan Soldiers’ Home (no. 5702) on February 9, 1910.

Henry died of senility and acute dysentery in the Home hospital on February 28, 1911, and his body was sent to Holland for burial. He was interred in Pilgrim Home cemetery, Holland.