John Henry Lindemeier

John Henry Lindemeier, also known as “Johann Heinrich” or “Henry Lindemier,” was born on October 13, 1834 in Bremen, Germany.

“John” immigrated to the United States eventually settling in western Michigan. By 1860 he was working as a farmer and living with the Eastway family in Olive, Ottawa County.

He stood 5’8” with gray eyes, brown hair and a light complexion, and was a 26-year-old farmer living in Olive, Ottawa County 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.) He was shot in the left arm on August 29, 1862, at Second Bull Run, and by mid-September he was a patient in Fairfax Seminary Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, and reported to be “doing well.” He remained hospitalized until he was discharged on November 17, 1862, at Fairfax Seminary hospital, Virginia, for a “gunshot fracture of upper third of left humerus with extensive superation.”

Following his discharge Henry returned to Ottawa County where he lived the remainder of his life.

John married Mary S. Sophronia (1850-1905), and they had at least two children: Harriet (b. 1877) and Carrie (b. 1879).

By 1880 he was working as a farmer and living with his wife and two daughters in Olive, Ottawa County, and in Ottawa center in 1883 when he was drawing $6.00 per month for a gunshot wound to the arm and knee (pension no. 10,979). He was living in Holland in 1888, in the First or Second Ward in 1890, and in the Second Ward in 1894 where he reported that his war wound was “still a running sore”; he was still living in Holland in 1896 and around 1900.

He was a member of the Old Third Michigan Infantry Association, and he provided an affidavit for Samuel Camp’s children in their application for a minors’ pension in 1896.

John died a widower, on March 25, 1910, possibly at Edmore, Montcalm County, and was buried in Olive cemetery, Ottawa County: section A lot 12 grave 1.