Second Lieutenant WILLIAM A. COMES

Second Lieutenant WM. A. COMES, was born, as near as I can learn, at Danbury, Conn., or Binghamton, N. Y., about 1836. His early life was passed at Binghamton, where he was an officer of a Sunday School and a Temperance Society. Here he had a large circle of friends. I have been able to learn little of his career, but the war found him a stone-cutter in New Haven, at the time of his enlistment, June 12th, 1862, as quartermaster-sergeant of the 14th. He was selected for this position by quartermaster Dibble, who knew his ability to till the position, being a fellow-townsman. As he was one of the first to go into Camp Foote, his position on the non-commissioned staff threw him into intimate relations with the writer, and who was his tentmate till both were commissioned 2d Lieutenants, Sept. 17th, 1862. Comes was assigned to Co. F, and at once entered into a thorough study of the duties of his position. He was rapidly acquiring this knowledge, and the esteem and affection of the company, when in the terrible charges at Fredericksburg, he was mortally wounded in the groin. He limped back to hospital, and there, apparently forgetful of his own wound, he was helping others, when the writer and his (Comes’) nearest friend Drum Major McCarthy, summoned the surgeon to examine the wound. The doctor at once pronounced the case a critical one. For a while we hoped for his recovery, but the wound grew more painful, and on the 14th he became delirious, and continued so for eight days after the battle, till the 21st December, when he died in hospital on the north side of the Rappahannock. His brother officers buried him at Falmouth, with military honors, but the remains were subsequently removed to the Grove Street Cemetery, in New Haven, and there buried. A monument is now (1872), about to be erected to his memory by the Sons of Temperance, in New Haven. From the intimate personal knowledge I had of Lieutenant Comes, I can testify that he was a pure and honest man. Not brilliant or dashing, he was faithful and anxious to do well whatever was set him to do. His letters written from the field bear evidence of this. As I look back over these years that have, passed, and think of unfaithfulness in all things committed to him, I think of the promise made to the faithful servant, by

“That monarch whose ‘well done’ confers a more than mortal fame.”