Clinch was born in Louisiana in 1832, the seventh of eight children. His father was Brevet General Duncan Lamont Clinch, Senior, a veteran of the War of 1812, Indian fighter, planter, and public servant. His mother was Eliza Bayard McIntosh of Camden County, Georgia, Clinch’s second wife.
He graduated from South Carolina College, now University of South Carolina, in 1849, the same year his father died.
Early
During the siege, he was wounded at least 11 times, slashed by a sword in the face, bayoneted in the neck and arms and shot through the shoulder, continuing to fight after the fall of the fort until his wounds were so severe he could no longer stand. He was taken to a nearby plantation. His wounds were considered mortal, but he was eventually taken to a hospital at Beaufort, South Carolina, where he struggled between life and death for three months, undergoing multiple surgeries.
Houston told the New York Sun newspaper that Bayard never fully recovered his physical vigor.
An obituary published in the New York Sun newspaper said Clinch "was known throughout the south as the most wounded Confederate soldier who lived to tell of the strife." He was promoted to major during his recuperation. In 1883, Clinch applied to the United States Patent Office for a patent on a new mounting system for a passenger vehicle called a sulkie which featured a mechanism to isolate the movement of the horses from the passenger seat for a smoother ride.
Nicholas Bayard Clinch died at Green Cove Springs, Florida on March 16, 1888 and he was interred in the Clinch family vault at Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia.
Among other battles, Captain Clinch’s Light Battery fought to defend Fort McAllister near Savannah, Georgia, during the Second Battle of Fort McAllister (1864) where it was stationed to provide support and to occupy field works along the route from the railroad and river to the fort during the attack by Sherman’s forces on December 13, 1864.
