Charles D. Garlick was born on September 8, 1844, in New York to Henry and Clarissa Garlick. His father was a farmer who owned $2,000 of real estate and $26 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in New Milford, Connecticut.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on September 27, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Company I of the 8^th Connecticut Infantry. He expressed devotion to the Union cause. In June 1862, he denounced South Carolina’s palmetto flag as the most “hated of all flags,” and he celebrated the “glorious Stars and stripes.”

 

He was “severely wounded” in the shoulder at Antietam on September 17, 1862. In November 1863, he informed his parents that he was “still in the Regimental Hospital.” His captain informed him that “he should not put me on duty again in the regiment [and] he is trying to get my discharge.” They were apparently unsuccessful, and Garlick remained in the army until September 21, 1864.

 

Garlick settled in New Haven, Connecticut, after leaving the army. He applied for a federal pension in March 1865 and eventually secured one. He married a woman named Ellen in the late 1860s, and they had at least five children: Charlotte, born around 1869; Nellie, born around 1871; Ella, born around 1878; Grace, born around 1880; and Viola, born around 1888. He worked as a joiner, and by 1870, he owned $300 of personal property. They moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the 1870s, and he worked as a clerk in a store there. By 1905, they were living in Rutherford, New Jersey. He died there on April 25, 1906.

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