John W. Morgridge was born November 12, 1842 in Maine, the son of Maine natives Lorenzo (b. 1819) and Vienna (b. 1811).
By 1850 John was attending school with his siblings, one of whom, his younger brother William, would also join the 3rd Michgian in 1861, and living with his family in Parkman, Piscataquis, Maine. Lorenzo took his family and left Maine sometime after 1851 and eventually settled in western Michigan. By 1860 John was working as a toll collector and living with another toll collector by the name of Elisha Faxon in Grand Rapids’ 4th Ward, Kent County. (That same year Felix Zoll, who would join Company C in 1861, was living with his wife just two houses away from Morgridge. In any case, John’s brother William and father Lorenzo were both living in Paris, Kent County. )
John was living in Grand Rapids when he joined a local militia company, the Grand Rapids Artillery, on July 16, 1860. The GRA was commanded by Captain Baker Borden, and would serve as the nucleus for Company B, also commanded by Borden, of the 3rd Michigan Infantry.
John was 19 years old and probably still living in Grand Rapids when he enlisted (as “John Morgraye”) in Company B on May 13, 1861. (His younger brother William enlisted in Company B in December of 1861.) He was discharged for disability on June 15, 1862.
John probably returned to Kent County where he reentered the service as “John Morgridge” in Company C, 10th Michigan Cavalry on November 28, 1863, at Paris, Kent County for 3 years, and was mustered the same day at Grand Rapids, crediting Paris. The regiment was organized in Grand Rapids between September 18 and November 18, 1863, when it was mustered into service. It left Michigan for Lexington, Kentucky on December 1, 1863, and participated in numerous operations, mostly in Kentucky and Tennessee throughout the winter of 1863-64.
Most of the 10th Michigan Cavalry’s primary area of operations would eventually be in the vicinity of Strawberry Plains, Tennessee. In January and February of 1864 he was sick at Camp Nelson, Kentucky and sick in Michigan in December. By March of 1865 he was reported sick at Knoxville,
Tennessee and he remained absent sick through May of 1865, although he was admitted to Harper hospital in Detroit on June 27, 1865. He was honorably discharged on August 3, 1865.
No pension seems to be available.
John eventually returned to Michigan and was possibly living with his brother William in Montcalm County, when he died on November 26, 1869, and was buried in Crystal Cemetery, Montcalm County.
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