Chauncey Strickland Jr.

Chauncey Strickland Jr. was born in 1842 in New York, the son of Chauncey Sr. (b. 1798) and Mary Ann (1802-1852).

Massachusetts native Chancy Sr. married New York-born Mary sometime before 1831 by which time they had settled in New York. By 1850 Chauncey Jr. was attending school with his five older siblings and living on the family farm in Royalton, Steuben County, New York. Mary Ann died at their home in Wayland, Steuben County, New York, in 1852. Chauncey Sr. eventually moved his family to Michigan and by 1860 he was living with the John Stone family in Sebawa, Ionia County (Chauncey Jr.'s obituary noted he was from Portland, Ionia County, before the war). In the summer of 1860 one Chauncey Strickland was working as a farm laborer in Dewitt, Clinton County lodged in the Clinton County jail (offense unknown).

Chauncey was 19 years old and possibly living in Clinton or Ionia County when he enlisted in Company G on May 10, 1861. (Company G, formerly the “Williams’ Rifles,” was made up predominantly of men from the Lansing area.)

According to Frank Siverd of Company G, Chauncey was in the “measles infirmary” shortly before the regiment left Michigan in June of 1861. According to Siverd, Third Michigan Regimental Surgeon D. W. Bliss, in order “to prevent the disease spreading, as soon as the first symptoms appear,” had all the measle cases “removed to the house of a physician, some three miles from camp.”

Chauncey was one of perhaps three dozen soldiers left behind sick in Grand Rapids when the Regiment departed for Washington, DC, on June 13, 1861.

Chauncey never rejoined the regiment. He died of “congestion of the lungs” in Grand Rapids on June 18, 1861, and his body was reportedly sent to Lansing for burial. There appears to be no record of his burial in Lansing, however. It is of course possible that he was buried in Clinton County, although one reliable source reported that his body was in fact brought to Portland, Ionia County where it was interred.

His father was living in St. Johns, Clinton County, in 1866. In 1869 Chauncey Sr. applied for a dependent’s pension (143603).