Frederick William Martin was born in Manchester, Massachusetts, in November 1843 to George Page Martin and Sarah Carter. His father was a mariner who owned $300 of real estate in 1850. Martin attended school in Manchester and worked as a fisherman before the war. He enlisted in the Union army on December 1, 1861, and mustered in as a private in Company H of the 19th Massachusetts Infantry on December 10. According to his enlistment records, he was 5 feet, 9 inches tall, with dark eyes and black hair.
He took part in the siege of Yorktown in the spring of 1862. Then, on June 30, 1862, he received a gunshot wound to his right ankle during the Battle of Glendale, one of the Seven Days' Battles. He was captured by Confederate forces, and his leg was amputated soon after the battle. He was paroled at City Point, Virginia, on July 19, and he was probably exchanged by early August. He spent the next several months recovering in a Union army hospital on Davids Island, New York. He was discharged on April 9, 1863.
Martin returned home to Massachusetts, and he worked as a shoemaker after the war. He apparently never married, and he died in Manchester on September 11, 1877.