Union Army Sharpshooter

BY BILL ANDREWS, BROCKPORT TOWN HISTORIAN

My previous article in the Penny Saver described the heroic career of Brockporter Milo Starks in the American Civil War. is one reports on the success of Brockporter John Tyler Farnham in recording what may be the most complete account of the life of a Union Army soldier.

Farnham lived on the corner of College and Utica Streets in Brockport. His father was a physician. At the time he enlisted in the 1st New York Sharpshooters out of Rochester in August 1862, John was a twenty-year-old printer employed by the weekly Brockport Republic.

Farnham wrote seven diaries during his military service. One is missing. I transcribed the surviving six and published them in a book, e Life of a Union Army Sharpshooter. ey covered 850 days of military service. Farnham wrote diary entries on 848 days. All entries are substantial. Also, the Brockport Republic published over y long letters by him from the front. I included them in the book when they did not duplicate his diary entries. He also wrote some 600 letters home that have not survived.

Farnham was frail and sickly. At times, he was so weak that o cers carried his ri e for him. Nevertheless, he was resourceful, gregarious, and popular. In his diaries, he names 108 friends in the service and 156 at home.

He subscribed to three newspapers and several magazines, attended 23 plays and six concerts, and read 22 books. He campaigned aggressively for Lincoln’s re-election in 1864, befriended a middle-aged couple of freed slaves, taught them to read, and helped build a school for them. Farnham met President Lincoln and was a near witness to his assassination.

In his diaries, Farnham records a wide variety of military experiences. He describes training, battles, skirmishes, long marches, and encampments. He was con ned in a hospital, organized a library for it, and cared for other patients. He clerked in the headquarters of the Iron Brigade and at the Adjutant General’s o ce in Washington. His diaries paint a detailed picture of the lives of ordinary soldiers, their food, living conditions, relations between o cers and enlisted men, their ordeals, triumphs, and tragedies.

Farnham was discharged in June 1865 and returned to Brockport and his occupation as a printer. He seems to have had a romantic relationship with Mary A. C. French, who lived at 82 Park Avenue. His diaries report that he wrote seventy letters to her. Apparently, that romance continued a er his discharge, but did not lead to marriage, perhaps because of his illness.

Farnham died of tuberculosis four years a er his discharge at the age of 27. All of his employers published highly laudatory obituaries. He is buried in the Morton Cemetery in the Town of Kendall beneath a beautiful mountain ash tree alongside his brother, Charles, who died of disease in the service. Mary French never married or had an occupation, though she lived until 1917.

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