William S. Agard updated 2026

William S. Agard was born around 1831 in Leroy, Lake County, Ohio, probably the son of Vermonter Ruth (born 1797). 

Ruth was possibly the same Ruth Mincklee who married Caleb Agard Jr. (born 1784) on December 28, 1822, in Geauga County, Ohio. By 1850 William was living with his mother in Thompson Township, Geauga County Ohio. In 1850 there was a Caleb Agard (no age) working as a farmer and living with the Isaac Morse family in Alaiedon, Ingham County, Michigan.

William eventually settled in Michigan.

He was probably living in White Oak Township, Ingham County, when he married another White Oak resident, New York native Lora Sheldon on July 20, 1857, in Bunker Hill, Ingham County; they had at least one child: Mary Alice (1858-1884, Mrs. Foote). 

By 1860 William was working as a laborer and living with his wife and child in Delta, Eaton County. Two houses away lived Orville Ingersoll who would also join the 3rd Michigan Infantry. That same year Ruth Agard was a nurse living with the Crosman family in Ingham County. 

He stood 5’8” with blue eyes, brown hair and a fair complexion, and was 30 years old and working as a laborer and living in either Delta or Lansing’s 2nd Ward when he enlisted in Company G on August 8, 1862, at Lansing for 3 years. (Company G, formerly the “Williams’ Rifles,” was made up predominantly of men from the Lansing area.) He was mustered the same day, and reported to the Regiment at Upton’s Hill, Virginia, on September 8. 

Shortly after joining the regiment in Virginia William contracted typhoid fever. He recovered but then suffered a relapse. According to Edgar Clark, also of Company G, William was sick for only several hours before he died in the Regimental hospital at Falmouth, Virginia on December 6, 1862. He was buried at 4:00 p.m. the same day (presumably near Falmouth although this remains unconfirmed).

Lora remarried one James Maskow, who, unknown to her, was already married. Lora divorced James and was living in Lansing when she married David White in 1875 at the home of A. J. Sheldon in Lansing. Two years later David was killed while uncoupling rail cars at the depot yard in Dearborn, Michigan. He was caught between the bumpers of the cars and crushed to death two years later and in 1879 Lora married William Sunt (he died in 1889).

In 1865 Lora applied for and received a dependent widow’s pension (cert. no. 63,881).  Between the late 1860s and 1890 she lived variously in Lansing, Dearborn, Greenville, Howard City, Big Rapids, Woodville, Cadillac, Fish Creek (Montcalm County) and Edmore, all in Michigan.