Wesley Moore

Wesley Moore was born in 1840 in Chateaugay County, New York, the son of James.

Wesley left New York and moved west, eventually settling in western Michigan by the time war had broken out.

He stood 5’7” with blue eyes, brown hair and a light complexion and was a 21-year-old wagon-maker probably living in Polkton, Ottawa County when he enlisted in Company I on May 13, 1861. (Company I was made up largely of men from Ottawa County, particularly from the eastern side of the County.) He was shot in the left thigh on May 31, 1862, at Fair Oaks, Virginia, and, according to one observer, by mid-July was in Chesapeake hospital at Fortress Monroe, having been “wounded in thigh, has had fever since, [is] thin and feeble, [and he] spoke earnestly, almost wildly of home.” However, Wesley remained hospitalized until he was discharged on March 25. 1863, at Washington, DC, as a result of his wound which rendered him “permanently lame.”

In 1865 he applied for and received a pension (no. 86438).

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

In 1898 (?) one Nellie M. Whitney was living in Pennsylvania and listed as either the guardian of or a minor child of Wesley’s (pension application no. 677142).

And in 1890 Wesley’s father was residing in Kansas when he applied for a pension (application no. 480981). (There is one Wesley Moore who served in Company M of the Fifth Michigan Cavalry and who is buried in Forest Lawn cemetery, in Saginaw, Michigan.)