JOSEPH LEWIS WHITNEY -- 118th INFANTRYSHOT IN THE LEG AT CHAFFIN'S FARM - Joseph Lewis Whitney was the last child of Lemuel Whitney and Catherine Conrow, to be born in Hemmingford, Quebec, before they moved to Mooers in the late 1830s. When he was 25 years old, Joseph enlisted in the 118th Infantry there. He was recruited by Lieutenant Lyman Holbrook for Captain Henry Ransom's Company I. Two days after Joseph was mustered into the company, they regiment left Plattsburgh for Washington on September 1, 1862.It took the regiment about three months to get to the capital with many stops along the way. They didn't get to the battlefield until April 1863 and the Siege of Suffolk and had four more minor battles that year. By mid-October the 118th found themselves encamped at Portsmouth. A month later, they were encamped at Newport News and stayed until mid-January before they moved on to the operations before Richmond and Petersburg by way of the Dismal Swamp.The 96th spent the summer fighting, on transports on the James River, and strengthening entrenchments and earthworks -- all the time getting closer to their final assault on Petersburg on April 2, 1865. Joseph didn't get to see the closing actions of the war in the trenches, he was one of 64 wounded in action at Chaffin's Farm (Chapin's Farm) on September 29, 1864 and spent the rest of the war in hospital at Willett's Point on Flushing Creek in Queens, NY. He was mustered out from the Grant U. S. Hospital there on April 1, 1865, after 2 years 7 months and 20 days in the ArmyJoseph returned to Mooers to farm and married Betsey Dundas in 1872. A few years later, with the help of the Invalid's Pension he had been receiving since 1865 for his serious leg wound, the family moved to Manton, MI, on the lower peninsula to farm. He died of cancer of the jaw on July 28, 1913 and was buried in the Greenwood Cemetery there. Betsey immediately applied for a Widow's Pension and received it until 1918 when she died and was buried beside her husband. Two of their sons moved to Tacoma, WA, and died there. Joseph's parents are buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Mooers.
