Arthur had a tragic life. After enlisting in a Maryland cavalry unit as a clerk (on the side of the Union), he was engaged in the disastrous Red River expedition. Then he went to the siege of Mobile Bay. It was there on Dauphin Island, only a few days after he was promoted to Commissary Sergeant, that he contracted malaria and never fully recovered.
Following the Civil War, Arthur married Susan Adams, the sister of Lorenzo Adams. (Lorenzo married Arthur's sister Annie.) He taught school in several places but apparently because of ill health, eventually began clerking for the War Department in Washington. Ford's Theatre, no longer being used as a theatre, was turned into a depository for Civil War Veterans' records, and it was there Arthur worked as clerk. The building was condemned, but no one did anything about it. In fact, excavations were being made in the cellar to install equipment for electric lighting. About 10:30 one morning, the interior of the whole building collapsed. Over 20 people died, and Arthur -- too badly injured even to be taken to a hospital in the primitive ambulances of those times -- was taken across the street to Mertz's Pharmacy where he died about 6:30 the following morning (June 10, 1893).
His only child was Margaret Josephine Girault.
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