Joseph D. Abbott was born on May 19, 1840, in Beverly, Massachusetts. He grew up and attended school in Beverly, and by 1860, he was working as a farm laborer.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on September 13, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Company A of the 1^st Massachusetts Cavalry. The regiment took part in the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Overland Campaign, and the siege of Petersburg. Confederate forces captured him in the Battle of Aldie on June 17, 1863, and imprisoned him in Richmond, Virginia. He received a parole on July 23, 1863, and he eventually rejoined the regiment. In November 1863, army officials detached him to the 6^th New York Independent Battery, and he remained with the battery until May 1864. He mustered out on September 13, 1864.

 

Abbott returned to Beverly after leaving the army, and he married Susan Webber on January 9, 1868. They had at least two children: Wayne, born around 1873; and Roger, born around 1875. They lived in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and Abbott worked as a farmer. He applied for a federal pension in December 1876 and eventually secured one. They moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts, in the 1880s, and he worked as a gate tender there. His wife died in the early 1900s, and by 1910, he was living in his son Roger’s household in Beverly. He died in Beverly of chronic myocarditis on October 26, 1913.

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