Lyman LaPruyn McCarty

Lyman LaPruyn McCarty was born on June 1, 1845, in Wayne County, Ohio, the son of Abraham Frances (1802-1860) and Eliza (Andrews, b. 1803).

Lyman’s parents were both born in New York and possibly married there. In any case by 1834 they were living in Ohio. The family left Ohio around 1848 and moved westward, eventually settling on a farm in Owosso, Shiawassee County, Michigan by 1850. By 1860 Lyman may have been working on a railroad line near Owosso, Shiawassee County, Michigan, and working with and/or living with one Frank Crawford, in Owosso.

In any case, he stood 5’4” with blue eyes, dark hair and a dark complexion and was a 16-year-old student from Owosso, Shiawassee County when he enlisted in Company B on May 13, 1861. He was discharged (on paper) on August 31, 1861, at Hunter’s Farm, Virginia, on account of general debility.

After his discharge Lyman returned to Michigan where he reentered the service in Company H, Fifth Michigan infantry on August 10, 1861, at Detroit for 3 years, and was mustered on September 28 at Detroit, giving his residence as Shiawassee County. He was absent sick in May of 1862, and by mid-July he was, according to one source, in Hygeia hospital near Fortress Monroe, serving as a nurse, “complaining, useless as a soldier.” He was discharged on December 4, 1862, near Falmouth, Virginia for “chronic diarrhea contracted in August, 1862,” and according to Fifth Michigan Regimental Surgeon Dr. Henry Lyster, Lyman had “been sick most of the time since his enlistment and is too light a frame & has too little vigor for a soldier.”

It is not known if Lyman returned to Michigan after his discharge from the army.

After he left the army a second time he settled in New York, and was living in Syracuse in June of 1863, in Rochester in July of 1866, and in Buffalo in January of 1868.

He married Florence A. Smith (b. 1845) on March 28, 1868, in Rochester, and for many years he worked as a railroad agent.

He was living in Kansas City, Missouri in May of 1870, opened a farm with his brother H. C. in Wereford Station, Davis County, Kansas, in 1872, in Denver, Colorado in December of 1879, back in Kansas City in 1881, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in August of 1885, and somewhere in Pennsylvania in January of 1890. While living in Kansas City, Lyman was in the wholesale grocery business with his older brother H. C. and was also employed as an General Western Passenger agent for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

Sometime around January of 1892 Lyman was living in New York City, where he would remain until his death in 1909, and he residing at 434 Broadway in 1908. While living in New York in 1907 he received a pension (, no. 1,145,094, dated 1907) drawing $12.00 per month (His widow received a pension no. 696,028, drawing the same rate).

Lyman died of prostate cancer on October 22, 1909, at the New York Postgraduate Hospital, 303 East Twentieth Street, New York City, but his remains were sent to Philadelphia where he was buried on October 30, 1909.

Florence was living in Philadelphia at 2307 West Thompson Street in 1909.