David Severn Scott was born on June 5, 1831, near Fairview, Indiana, to William Scott and Rebecca Severn. His father was a farmer who owned $4,000 of real estate and $675 of personal property by 1860. The family moved to Greenfield, Indiana, around 1832, and his mother died there around 1840. Scott grew up in Greenfield and, as one writer later recalled, received his education “in the subscription schools of his county.” Around 1843, when he was 12 years old, one of his arms was caught and severely injured in the cogwheels of a flour mill. Doctors amputated the arm halfway between his shoulder and his elbow.

 

Scott left home around 1850 and earned a living as a farmer. As one writer noted, he “worked for a farmer…at $5 per month for nine months each year, [and] the remaining three months [he] did chores mornings and evenings…while attending school.” Then, between 1852 and 1856, he worked as a travelling “book agent.” He returned home around 1856 and served as town constable from 1857 until 1860.

 

Scott supported the Democratic Party. In April 1861, he served as secretary for a local Democratic meeting, which denounced “political abolitionism” and the “general policy of the Republican party.” Nonetheless, he fiercely supported the Union war effort. Scott and his fellow Democratic partisans vowed to “ignor[e] for the present all past dissensions and party bitterness to unite as one people in support of their common Government.”

 

Acting upon these convictions, Scott enlisted in the Union army on April 19, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Company I of the 8^th Indiana Infantry. He spent the next three months serving in present-day West Virginia, and he mustered out on August 6, 1861. Later that month, he served as secretary for another Democratic meeting in Greenfield. Scott and his fellow partisans swore that they were “devotedly attached to the Union of the States,” and they favored a “vigorous prosecution” of the war.

 

He enlisted again on September 5, 1861, and he mustered in as a corporal in Company H of the 8^th Indiana Infantry later that day. The regiment camped near Otterville, Missouri, that winter, and Scott served as a hospital steward there. In a letter that winter, he declared that he was “in for the war, and will not return until it is over.” He refused to allow his disability to interfere with his conception of duty, writing that “whatever a man with one arm can do he will do to restore the Union to its former state.”

 

Scott took part in the Battle of Pea Ridge and the siege of Vicksburg. As he later explained, he “enlisted with one arm, and went through the war thus disabled, and carried a gun two years of the time, doing duty the same as other soldiers.” He mustered out in February 1864. He corresponded with Mary Catherine Missimer throughout the war, and after leaving the army, he travelled to Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, to marry her. Their son William was born on October 26, 1868.

 

In August 1864, he was appointed sutler to the 8^th Indiana. He accompanied the regiment through Georgia and Virginia, and he returned home to Indiana in August 1865. He moved to Hannibal, Missouri, after the war and worked in the real estate industry there. He applied for a federal pension in February 1880 and eventually secured one. He served as constable from 1884 until 1890 and then as Justice of the Peace on and off from 1890 until the early 1900s. His wife died on November 7, 1890, and he passed away in Hannibal around 1907.

 

Image: David Severn Scott (C. P. Greene, A Mirror of Hannibal)

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