Nathan B. Sines

Nathan B. Sines was born in 1817 or 1821 in New York.

Nathan was married to New York native “Delong” (1815-1880) and left New York and came to western Michigan. By 1850 Nathan was working as a mason and living with his wife in Grand Rapids, Kent County. (Next door lived Charles’ Scaddin and his family; Charles’s son Charles would also join the Third Michigan.) By 1859-60 Nathan was working as a mason and boarding at the Bridge Street House in Grand Rapids. In 1860 Nathan was still living at the Bridge Street House in Grand Rapids’ Second Ward; there is no mention of his wife.

He stood 5’10” with blue eyes, brown hair and a light complexion and was 40 years old and probably still living in Grand Rapids when he enlisted in Company F on May 13, 1861. He was reported absent sick in the hospital from August of 1862 through November, and discharged on March 18, 1863, at Camp Pitcher, Virginia, for organic liver disease and dropsy which “came on at Blackburn’s Ford, Virginia, on July 18, 1861.”

He was reportedly living in Washington, DC, in late March of 1863 when he was a witness in the pension application of another member of the Old Third, Martin Neilson. And in April of 1863 (?) Nathan himself applied for a pension (no. 17978) but the certificate was never granted.

By 1870 Nathan was working as a plasterer and living with his wife New York native Adaline (b. 1816) in Grand Rapids’ Fifth Ward. In 1880 Delina Sines was reported as a widow living alone in Ada, Kent County. She apparently died that same year and was buried in Ada cemetery. Her headstone notes “Aunt Delaney Signs, 1815-1880.”