Joseph F. Sinclair (1847 - 1896)

From the Journal of the 14th Annual Encampment of the Department of Washington and Alaska, Grand Army of the Republic, June 1896:

IN MEMORIAM 

Joseph F. Sinclair

Joseph F. Sinclair died in California, where he had gone in search of heath, on the ––– day of February, 1896.  Comrade Sinclair was born in Guysboro county, Nova Scotia, May 28th, 1847.  Early in the war he came to this country and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, and performed gallant service in the North Atlantic squadron.  He was one of the storming party that captured Fort Fisher, and was wounded and captured within the works.  Although recaptured, he was too badly wounded for further active service.  In 1879 he came to Yakima, in this state, and since that time was actively engaged in lumbering along the line of the Northern Pacific railroad and at Ballard and in farming in Yakima county.  Comrade Sinclair joined Meade Post No. 9 in 1883, and was its commander.  He became a charter member of Lt. Cushing Post No. 56, at Ballard, and was its Commander in 1890 and 1891.  He was Department Chaplain in 1890, and Department Commander in 1893. He was devoted to the interest of his Comrades, sincere and earnest in his efforts to benefit them, and spared no pains to build up the order he loved so well.  During his term as Department Commander he visited more Posts than any other Commander has ever done, and his administration was one of the most successful in the history of the Grand Army.  He was a very devoted husband and never ceased to mourn the death of his loved and loving wife, which occurred in 1888.  In a poem written May 8th, 1890, and dedicated to his daughter, Christine Gertrude, he said:

“I still love – home is broken; my family scattered wide.

Two of them on the Atlantic, and two on the Pacific side.

The dear wife of my bosom beneath the sod doth lay,

Way up the Natches river, from birth place far away.”

To his surviving children, we tender our most sincere sympathy.  Comrade Sinclair was a zealous and devoted member of the Grand Army of the Republic, a faithful and steadfast friend a generous and wholesouled Comrade, and a model citizen in every relation of life.  We mourn his loss as a brother.

Information about his gravesite can be found here.