Thomas Lynch

Thomas Lynch was born 1839 in Ireland.

Thomas immigrated to America and eventually settled in western Michigan sometime before 1860 when he was working as a laborer living with another Irish laborer Thomas Burns and a farmer from New York by the name of Charles Taylor, in Clay Banks, Oceana County.

Thomas was 22 years old and still residing in Clay Banks when he enlisted in Company I on May 13, 1861. He was detached working as a pioneer from July of 1862 through October, and he may have been wounded during the action at Fredericksburg, Virginia on December 13, 1862. If so he was eventually returned to duty and was slightly wounded on May 6, 1864, at the Wilderness, Virginia. He was mustered out of service in June of 1864.

It is not known if Thomas returned to Michigan after he was mustered out. He lived in Orange, Texas and worked for some years as an engineer.

In 1876 he applied for a pension (no. 221768).

Thomas returned to Michigan and was admitted as a single man to the Michigan Soldiers’ Home (no. 1476) on February 20, 1891.

He died of consumption in the Home hospital on May 27, 1891, and was buried in the Home cemetery: section 3 row 9 grave 7.