George Henry Patch was born on December 8, 1844, in Lexington, Massachusetts, to George and Mary Patch. His father was a railroad worker who owned $600 of real estate and $200 of personal property by 1860. He grew up in Littleton, Massachusetts.
He enlisted in the Union army on August 24, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Company F of the 19th Massachusetts Infantry four days later. The regiment took part in the Seven Days’ Battles, the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Gettysburg, the Overland Campaign, and the siege of Petersburg.
In February 1862, he expressed himself “perfectly contented” with army life, writing that he was “earning my living” and had “something to take up my mind.” In October 1862, he denounced the “Abolition Party.” He blamed abolitionists for prolonging the war. If Republican politician Charles Sumner “show[ed] his face in this camp,” Patch wrote, “he would be murdered…It is such men as he keeps the war along killing thousands of men.” He supported Peace Democrat Clement Vallandigham and insisted that the “war is never going to end by fighting.”
Nonetheless, he remained fiercely loyal to the Union, writing that any “man that dont like the Government enough to fight for it[s] support and prolongation ought to leave it.” Americans who refused to enlist, he argued, “ought to be ashamed.” Confederate forces captured him at Antietam on September 17, 1862, and he remained a prisoner of war until November 1, 1862. He mustered out on August 28, 1864.
Patch settled in Framingham, Massachusetts, after leaving the army, and he earned a living as a “railroad brakeman.” He married Caroline E. Bacon on October 19, 1874, and the couple apparently had no children. By 1880, he was working as a reporter for the Boston Globe.
He supported the Republican Party, and he was reportedly “especially active” in the election of President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. He served as commander of the Grand Army of the Republic’s Department of Massachusetts, and one writer declared him “one of the best known and most popular of the Grand Army men in the state…he was a forcible speaker and an indefatigable worker in the Grand Army.” He also served as a trustee for the National Home for Disabled Volunteer soldiers in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He died of bronchitis in Framingham on July 26, 1887.
Image: George H. Patch (Boston Globe, 27 July 1887)