Private Samuel Dunmire was drafted and mustered into the Pa 102nd Regiment, Company L on July 11, 1863 in Pittsburg Pa. He was wounded March 25, 1865, at Ft. Fisher, Petersburg Va., suffering a gunshot to his foot.  He was taken to the hospital at Cold Harbor, then transferred to the U. S. General Hospital at Chester, Pa.   He was discharged by General Order, June 14, 1865.
 
     After the war he returned to Robbins Station, Westmorland Co. Pa., and to his wife Caroline Virginia McGuire Dunmire, age 25, who awaited him. He returned to his occupation of mining and slag hauling. Sam & Caroline remained childless until she died in June 1866.
      Samuel remarried in February 1867 to Nancy Jane Carmichael, in Cramer, Indiana Co. They moved to the Altoona area of Blair Co., where Samuel worked in the mines until moving to Scotdale, Westmoreland Co. and then to Ruffsdale, Pa.  Samuel and Nancy Jane had 11 children, 8 of whom survived childhood.
     Photographs of Samuel show him to be a very thin man with a long white beard. According to family lore, he always portrayed “Uncle Sam” in 4th of July Parades.
Relatives depicted Sam as a very quiet man.
Samuel’s great-granddaughter quoted Samuel’s pension records being filled with pleas to receive pension for dire effects of terrible food during his service and accounts of his affliction and reports of the inability to work full time.
An affidavit dated October 1889 given by Wm Fitzgerald, Corporal of Co D., regarding the wound to Samuel’s foot; “ I was present and saw the shell strike said Samuel Dunmire on the foot. I saw his shoe fly, I think, ten feet in the air”. Another affidavit given by Isaac Coldren, 1st Lieut. Of Co L;
“Samuel incurred a wound of heal and also took sick. He was taken to City Point Hospital. I mind him being sick and had been sick for several months before. He could not eat any on account of the pain in his stomach. He had the dispepsia and throwed up everything he eat. He had also chronic diaorhea and piles. I seen him in about 2 months after he came out of the hospital. The wound he suffered from was caused by a shell exploding close to him. I know he was sound when he enlisted and I mind that he told me that the salt meat and beans would kill him and he had to live on hard tack. He was the strongest man in our mess at first but I think he got a bad cold that settled in his stomach. I never seen him after we left City Point but I wrote to him a year after I came home and he stated to me that he could not live long as he could not eat scarse anything”.
His Great-grand-daughter also reports; Sam’s failing health caused a reduction in his income and after their children were grown, boarders were often taken into the house. One grandchild recalls “she thought their house was a family hotel and often served oysters at dinner”.
 
Samuel Dunmire was born * around 1830 to 1835. he died August 8, 1916 and is buried in Lebanon Cemetery, Tarrs, Pa. His grave has a Civil War Marker.
 
* Birth dates in Cumberland Co. census & Samuel’s pension record differ from information in his obituary.
 
Samuel Dunmire is the Great-grandfather of  Ann Dunmire Heinz, who has generously provided this information