One of the Civil War veterans buried in the Marshfield Pioneer Cemetery in Coos Bay, Ore., is Thomas C. Wyman, who served as the assistant Cape Arago lighthouse keeper from 1891 to 1906.
Wyman enlisted in the Union army in 1861, and fought as a private with the 2nd Maine Volunteer Infantry in the second battle of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Two years later, he received a bullet in a leg during a bayonet charge down Little Round Top at Gettysburg. The charge won the infantry commander, Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Medal of Honor.
After the war, Wyman moved to the lighthouse in Oregon, where he would lose a leg from injuries suffered in a fall.
At the time, the only access to the lighthouse island was a 400-foot cable tramway across an inlet to the mainland. In July 1898, the cable snapped as Wyman, his daughter and two other men were crossing in a cage suspended below the cable. They plunged into the surf 60 feet below, but only Wyman landed on rocks, so severely injuring a leg that it had to be amputated.
Sources: Fletcher, Randol B. Hidden History of Civil War Oregon. Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2011. 140. Print; Cape Arago, OR." Lighthouse Friends.Com. 2015. Web. 25 Dec. 2015.
