As Letters from War: 1861 heads toward its close at the end of the year, I’ll begin sharing what became of many of the people we’ve followed through the series.

It’s time to close the loop on Private James Morgan of the 11th Pennsylvania.

James Morgan was an English immigrant who settled in Pittston, Pennsylvania. When the Civil War broke out, he enlisted in Company F, 11th Pennsylvania — the Pittston Volunteers.

Morgan appeared in several letters in this series because he was among the Coal Region’s first casualties of the war. On July 2, 1861, the 33-year-old took a gunshot wound to the leg at the Battle of Hoke’s Run. He and fellow soldier Daniel E. Stiles became the first men from Pittston wounded in the war.

From the July 6, 1861 letter of Francis Woodhouse, Company F, 11th Pennsylvania:

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The enemy’s balls whistled like hail about our ears and sometimes a charge of grape would pass through our line, but none of our company were killed although we got the hottest of the fire. 

James Morgan was dangerously wounded below the knee, the ball breaking the bone, and Daniel Stiles in the thick part of the thigh, but not seriously; Morgan is doing well at present. They were both of them near me when they fell. I expected to get a pop every minute, but did not receive a scratch.

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Morgan moved through a series of military hospitals before arriving at a makeshift hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He died there of his wounds on October 4, 1861.

His widow, Ann, and their children were granted a pension of $8 per month. The Pension Bureau later challenged that award, citing gaps in the poorly kept records of the war’s opening months. Ann Morgan then spent months fighting to restore the payments she was owed as a war widow under federal law. She eventually succeeded, and the pension resumed.

James Morgan is buried in Loudon Park National Cemetery in Baltimore.

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Read more in the Letters from War: 1861 series

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