Albertus Sparks

Albertus Sparks was born on November of 1839 in Cortland County, New York, the son of Amos (b. 1793) and Desire (b. 1797).

Both of Albertus’ parents were born in Vermont and they may have married there. In any case they eventually moved to New York where they were probably living when their oldest child Orville A was born in 1829. Amos eventually took his family from New York and sometime between 1839 and 1850 moved to Michigan eventually settling in Crockery, Ottawa County by the summer of 1850 where Amos worked a farm. By 1860 Albertus was a farmer living with his family in Crockery, where his father worked as a farmer.

He stood 6’0” with blue eyes, brown hair and a light complexion and was 21 years old and probably still living in Crockery 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.) On October 6, 1861, Captain George Weatherwax of Company I wrote that “Sparks has done but little duty since [he] enlisted and has done no duty since the battle of Bull Run [on] July 21, 1861. Said Sparks complained of rheumatism ever since that time and has been wholly unfit for duty.” Indeed, he was discharged for chronic rheumatism on October 20, 1861 at Fort Lyon, Virginia. (William J. Cobb, also of Company I, wrote home on November 16 that he sent a photograph of himself home to his family in Michigan with Albert.)

After his discharge from the army Albertus returned to western Michigan where he reentered the service in M company, Tenth Michigan cavalry on February 22, 1865, at Grand Rapids for 1 year, crediting Grand Rapids’ Third Ward, and was mustered March 3. He joined the Regiment June 11 at Lenoir, Tennessee, was in the provost marshal’s office at Knoxville, Tennessee through July, and sick at Chattanooga, Tennessee in August. He was honorably discharged, presumably for disability, on September 30, 1865.

After the war Albertus returned to Michigan.

He married Pennsylvania native Sarah (b. 1848), and they had at least seven children: Alburtus (b. 1867), Jenette (b. 1869), Lilly (b. 1870), Orpha (b. 1873), Charles B. (b. 1886), Lillie H. (b. 1890) and Mildred (b. 1893).

By 1870 he was working as a farmer and living with his wife and children in Ferry, Oceana County and working as a farmer in Ferry in 1880; indeed he lived in Ferry for many years. He was living in Ferry, Oceana County in 1888, 1890 and 1894 and still living with his wife and children and farming in Ferry Township in 1900.

In 1877 he applied for and received a pension (no. 275829).

Albertus died on January 3, 1915, in Atlanta, Georgia, and was presumably buried there.

In 1915 his widow may have been living in Georgia when she applied for and received a pension (no. 801091)