Friday, October 10, 2008

William S. Gallup

William S. Gallup, also known as “Gallop,” was born 1841 in Michigan, the son of Jonah or Josiah (b. 1799) and Hannah (b. 1810).

Sometime between 1835 and 1837 Josiah and Hannah, along with their two children, James and Martha, left England and immigrated to the United States, settling first in New York. By 1850 William was living with his family on a farm in Ionia County, Michigan, and by 1860 William was a farm laborer working for and/or living with Frederick Smith, a farmer in Lyons, Ionia County.

William was 20 years old and residing in Ionia County when he enlisted in Company E on May 13, 1861. (Company E was composed in large part by men from Clinton and Ingham counties, as well as parts of Ionia County.) In March of 1863 he was absent sick, but soon afterwards returned to the Regiment, and on May 3, 1863, was wounded in the left thigh at Chancellorsville, Virginia.

On June 9, he left for home on sick furlough, and in fact he remained absent wounded until he was transferred to the Veterans’ Reserve Corps in Washington, DC, on November 26, 1863. (According to Andrew Kilpatrick, also of Company E, William was in a “convalescent camp’, possibly in Alexandria, Virginia, in mid-November of 1863.)

William eventually returned to Michigan where for many years he worked as a carpenter. He was living in Lyons in 1883 and by 1888 he was living in Greenville, Montcalm County. Two years later he was residing in Grand Rapids, in the Tenth Ward in 1894 and probably at 327 Broadway in 1895. He then apparently moved to Muir, Ionia County where he was living from 1906 to probably 1909.

He was married to Mary G. (1843-1914).

In 1866 he applied for and received a pension (no. 78,659), drawing $4.00 per month in 1883 for a wounded left thigh. He was a member of the Old Third Michigan Infantry Association and Grand Army of the Republic Dresser Post No. 100 in Lyons.

William was probably still living in Muir when he died on May 16, 1911, and was buried by the County as an “indigent soldier” in Muir cemetery: grave no. 253.

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