Morrow County 

"The Mt. Gilead Guards"
115 soldiers; 21 died during the war

                

Source: History of Morrow County , Captain Walden Kelly's A Historic Sketch  Lest We Forget, Company E, 26th Ohio Infantry, In the War for the Union 1861-1865,an article Capt. Kelley wrote that was printed in The Ohio Soldier newspaper, Vol. 3, no.8, Nov. 23, 1889, and excerpts from letters Capt. Kelley wrote home during 1865, and printed in the Ohio Soldier, Vol XIII, no. 21.

 

From History of Morrow County:

At the same time that Company C was recruited at Westfield, Morrow county, and in Delaware county, Dr. Sylvester M. Hewitt, of Mt. Gilead, and Henry C. Brumback, of same place, as first lieutenant and James E. Goodman, of Cardington, as second lieutenant, commenced to recruit for Company E. Company E took the nickname: "The Mt. Gilead Guards." Each of their commissions was dated June 5, 1861. Nearly all the enlistments were in June, 1861.

On July 26, Captain Hewitt was promoted to major of the Thirty-second Regiment and on July 29, 1861, James K. Ewart, a resident of Harmony township, Morrow county, was commissioned captain of Company E. He had military training at Norwich University, Vermont, and was an accomplished officer. Oscar l. R. French was made a first sergeant, and was discharged February 7, 1862, as first lieutenant Company C, One Hundred and Eightieth Ohio Volunteer lnfantry. Henry C. Brumback resigned November 20, 1861, and James E. Godman was promoted to the vacancy December 23, 1861; resigned April 26, 1862, and died at home May 11,1862.

William H. Green was appointed sergeant from corporal October 11, 1861; and first sergeant January 14, 1863, and died October 21, 1863, from wounds received at the battle of Chickamauga, Georgia, September 19, 1863.

Walden Kelly, aged eighteen, was appointed sergeant from corporal February 6, 1862; first sergeant October 22, 1863; promoted to first lieutenant December 9, 1864, and to captain Company F, February 28, 1865, and mustered out with that company October 21, 1865; veteran. His record is a very heroic one. To commemorate the services of Company E, he has written and published a sketch entitled, "A Historic Sketch;" "Lest We Forget"; "Company E, Twenty-sixth Ohio Infantry." In it he gives a thrilling account of the services of the company and regiment.

After giving a graphic account of the first day's battle at Chickamauga, September 19, 1863, he says this: "Over half of the company had fallen in two or three hours of desperate fighting, not as Greek met Greek, but as Americans met Americans, so view the field, ye good people of Morrow County; stand by that monument erected by the great State of Ohio to the memory of the Twenty-sixth, two hundred and twelve of whom fell in that bloody battle--three fourths of them undoubtedly on the Vineyard Farm Then, but a few yards away, see the one erected by the State of Georgia in memory of the Twentieth Regiment of Infantry, Confederate States of America, and read the inscription on it 'this regiment went into battle with 23 officers and of this number 17 were killed and wounded."

Lieutenant Colonel William H. Young was in command of the Twenty-sixth Ohio at this battle, and his report shows 350 men of the regiment engaged, and the total loss 213. Company E, had 32 in the battle, of whom 20 were killed and wounded; Killed and mortally wounded, First Lieutenant Francis M. Williams; First Sergeant William H. Green; Sergeant Silas Stucky; Corporal Luther Reed and Privates Moses Aller, William Calvert, John Blaine, James R. Goodman, Coos. A. R. Kline, Samuel Neiswander, Emanuel W. Stahler, and Robert W. Stonestreet. The wounded were: Corporals James W. Ciifton and isaac D. Barrett; William H. H. Geyer, Henry C. Latham, McDonald Lottridge, John Mishey, Joseph L. Rue, Henry Stovenour and Isaiah Sipes. Twenty killed and wounded out of thirty-two of Company E, and only one of the wounded, William H. H. Geyer was ever able to rejoin the company.

The services of the Twenty-sixth Ohio, at the battle of Mission Ridge, Tennessee, November 25, 1863, and on the Atlanta campaign, from May 3 to September 5, 1864, in many battles, as well as during the Nashville campaign in the destruction of the rebel army under General J. B. Hood in December, 1864, were very heroic and those who "paid the last full measure of devotion to their country" with their blood and their lives of Company E. in these campaigns were as follows: William Derr (twice wounded), Daniel Densel, John Derr, Origen M. Iles, Joseph Wallace Miller, Henry G. Shedd, Socrates Shaw, James H Smith, Hudson H. Thompson and Joseph utter. The company and regiment were finally mustered out October 21, 1865, at Victoria, Texas, and discharged at Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio in November 1865.

The descendants of the soldiers of the Twenty-sixth Ohio Regiment can refer with pride to the services of their fathers.

These served three years: Sergeant George W. Jackson; Corporal Andrew M. Smith; Socrates Chandler, Peter Craley, Joseph Cromer, William H, H. Geyer, Henry L. High, Martin M. Karr, McDonald Lottridge, and Philip Metzger. These served as veterans and were mustered out October 21, 1865, at Victoria, Texas: First Sergeant Samuel Watson, Sergeant John Bechtel; Corporal John L. Richardson; John W Emerson, Charles Henderson, George W. Longstreet, James W. Longstreet, and Edmund L. Thompson.

Excerpts from Captain Walden Kelly's speech printed in The Ohio Soldier newspaper, Nov. 23, 1889, entitled, History of Company E, 26th OVVI, after being read at the 1889 reunion at Mt. Gilead.

"At the late reunion of the Twenty-sixth Ohio the following very interesting history of company E, of that regiment was read by Captain Wal. Kelley, of Osborn, Mo., he having entered the service with that company and remained with it until promoted to captain of company F:

"Mr. President, Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen:  We thank the mayor and the good people of Mt. Gilead and vicinity for the hospitable and kind manner in which the home of company E has provided for our entertainment and comfort, and also for our visiting friends and comrades.

I presume that there are more of Captain Hewitt's company here to day than have been in Mt. Gilead at any time since we 'fell in' on the 14th day of June, 1861.  Over twenty-eight years ago, on the public square, not one hundred yards from where we are now gathered, nearly the entire populace, old and young, went with us as we marched to what was then Gilead station ( now Edison), and with tears coursing down their cheeks, a warm grasp of the hand, many kisses and prayers for a God speed, we were off for the war, the first complete company raised in Mt. Gilead. Little did we or the people who on that day bid us that hearty good-bye think that four and one-half years would elapse before the remnant of that company, thirteen in number, would come home  to stay and enjoy the benefits and blessings of a free and united country-- the country which we and our comrades of the Twenty-sixth Ohio, including those lost and wounded and those whose failing health had compelled us to leave along the way, had done so much to maintain.

Captain Hewitt's company, upon arriving at Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, became company E of the Twenty-sixth Ohio, a regiment organized of ten companies with no two of them from any one county, if from any one congressional district... After six weeks of drilling and being disciplined to camp life we were presented with gray uniforms and armed with the old 'Harper's Ferry' muskets-- the government not being able to furnish regulation uniforms and good arms as fast as the demand required.

We were sent to West Virginia [ actually, western Virginia ], by railroad to Cincinnati, and steamboat up the Ohio and Kanawha rivers to Charleston, West Va. From there we met our first experience in marching, going to Gauley, which, was about forty miles, and when we were united with General  JD Cox's command and actual service in the face of the enemy was there commenced, we were in the front and remained there until after the surrender at Appomattox.

While in western Virginia we received our introduction 'under fire'.  This was a Horseshoe Bend.  A report of this action was published in the daily papers, north and south, giving the glowing description  of the heroism and terrible loss of the enemy;  and as far as we have since been able to learn there were no casualties on either side except by accident.  L:ater in the war our regiment participated in engagements in which a large per cent of loss was sustained, and of which we have never yet seen an account in print, viz.: Lavergne, December 27th, 1862, and at Kenesaw Mountain, June 23rd, 1864.

To illustrate our knowledge  of war at the time of our first skirmish I will relate a circumstance which occurred at Horseshoe Bend. A part of the Twenty-sixth Ohio were sent at night some ten miles up New river from Gauley bridge to reinforce a part of the Eleventh Ohio, who had been falling back in front of General Wise's confederate troops on the day before. Our plan  was to get them to attack us and we were sent forward for that purpose. All of our troops were secreted and out of view, except, company E, who were deployed across a bald hill in plain view of the road upon which the enemy were expected, and in fact the only road by which they could approach us---it being a mountainous country. The enemy had one piece of artillery, and when they rounded the point of the mountain and came into view about a quarter of a mile off they opened fire. When the first shot was fired we received orders to lie down. The second shot was a shell which  passed over us  and exploded about a hundred yards in our rear, when one member of company E, who knew nothing of the nature of a shell, jumped up and exclaimed: ' Boys, we are surrounded'.

We participated in the Sewell Mountain campaign, being the advance guard part of the time while  on the advance and rear guard on nearly all the retreat.Then followed the Cotton mountain and Fayetteville campaign and Mud march, and we went into winter quarters at Fayetteville. 

During our service in West Virginia our casualties were very light, except from exposure, sickness and disease, which played sad havoc among us. The measles perhaps crippled our regiment  more than any one cause, for the first six months of service reduced our numbers about one half.  This I presume is the experience of every new regiment. The losses in battle were to come from the remaining half or from those who were able by power of endurance and constitutions of iron, to withstand the hardships of army life.

In the month of January, 1862, we were transferred from Virginia to Kentucky.  Starting from Louisville, Ky., in February, we marched with General Thomas J Wood's Sixth division, department of Ohio, under Buell, via Bardstown, Mumfordsville, and Bowling Green, Ky., to Nashville, Tenn., thence southwest to western Tennessee, arriving just in time to take the advance in following Beauregard's defeated army from Pittsburg Landing [ after the battle of Shiloh].

We were in the siege of Corinth, and when it was taken we marched across northeastern Mississippi, northern Alabama, central Tennessee to east Tennessee; then back through Nashville, Bowling Green and Mumfordsville to Louisville, Ky., having marched since leaving Louisville in February about two thousand miles. But our marching was not yet over. We stopped but a few days when Wood's division took the advance in following Bragg's army. We found him at Perrysville [sic] and followed him on to Cumberland Gap, where we left him and went back to Nashville.

After a few week's rest we started on the Stone river campaign, in which our regiment gained for itself a reputation seldom equaled and never excelled in the history of wars.  While on the advance at Lavergne, a gallant little charge was made.  I say little because of the shortness of the period required to reach success. With one rush we swept all before us, giving the enemy but one chance to fire; but in that one volley they left twenty-eight of our brave boys dead, dying or wounded. 

At Stone river, we were crossing the stream early Wednesday morning,  December 31st, 1862, to lead the attack upon the right of Bragg's army, when the extreme right of our army was flanked and driven from position.  The flanking columns were of such numbers and force as to break the entire right wing and center of our army.

We were recalled  and thrown into the front line near the intersection of the Nashville and Murfreesboro pike and the railroad. There was a continuous break in the union army lines from the extreme right of the army extending to the left until it reached the position occupied  by the Twenty-sixth Ohio. There it stopped. 

For four hours we, without fortifications of any kind, held that key  to the battle line against the exultant and , as they had been up to that time, victorious army. Their reserves and fresh troops were hurled again and again against that position only to be repulsed. For four long hours were our staying qualities tested to the extreme, and until Rosecrans could establish a new, perfect and compact battle front did we act as a pivot and rallying point for the army of the Cumberland.

Company E's commanding officer, Lieutenant David McClellan, was killed. Colonel Garashe, General Rosecrans' adjutant general, was killed near our regiment [beheaded by a cannonball], and when we were relieved during a lull in the battle, we left over one third of our number either killed or wounded.  Gen Rosecrans was there in person and stated to the regiment that relieved us, after they had passed two paces in front and while we were still in position: ' All that I ask of the Twenty-third Kentucky is to do as the regiment you relieve have done; hold this position against every odds.'

Then he ( Gen. Rosecrans ) went with us in person over a slight hill about three hundred yards in the rear and said to us  ' Twenty-sixth Ohio, you have gained for yourselves today almost immortal honors, and have done more than I ought to ask of you.  Fill your cartridge boxes first and then sit down and rest yourselves.' 

Stone river was changed from an apparent defeat into a victory. Murfreesboro became ours, and after a liberal rest in camp the Tulahoma campaign followed. Then came the march across the Cumberland mountains, over the Tennessee river, Sand and the frowning from Lookout mountain. Then Chattanooga was ours, and permit me to say that the Twenty-sixth Ohio was the first complete union regiment into that city. Company E was on the skirmish line and the advance guard of the army when we rounded the point of Lookout mountain.  It is, however, true that some daring members of the Ninty[sic]-seventh Ohio had crossed the Tennessee river and planted their colors on the fort near the city, and also a part of the Ninty[sic]-second Illinois mounted infantry passed us during the two miles between Lookout mountain and the city, but that was after it was plainly demonstrated that the city was ours. We did the patrol duty in the city the first day and night after the capture.

Then followed the the[sic] terrible battle a Chicamuaga[sic], just inside the northern border of Georgia, and but twelve or fifteen miles from Chattanooga. At this battle occurred the heaviest per cent of losses ( the entire force of both armies being taken into consideration ) of any great battle during the civil war. The Twenty-sixth Ohio  sustained a loss in killed and wounded which was equaled by but few regiments during the war, going into the engagement with about 350 and losing 212, thus losing over 60 per cent. [ Note: Most of the losses were at the East Viniard Fields battle location]. Company E had its commanding officer, Lieutenant Francis M Williams, killed.

In two short months 50 per cent of the remaining heroes of the Twenty-sixth Ohio went down in that most brilliant charge of the war, Missionary Ridge, our regiment capturing the enemy's works within two hundred yards of Bragg's headquarters and on the direct line of the wagon road leading from the ridge back to Chicamauga[sic] station. By our being immediately crowded half a mile back on the road we cut off all possibility of the artillery from the ridge making a successful retreat.  Fifty-two cannon and 6,000 prisoners were the fruits of this brilliant charge.  Company E again lost her commanding officer, William B Johnson, who was very severely  wounded.  Think not that I try to claim all the honors  of this brilliant charge for the Twenty-sixth Ohio; for I call to mind two companies  besides our own which were organized at Mt. Gilead who share their honors with ours.  In the first brigade to our right was the Sixty-fifth Ohio  and in it that gallant Company D, and in the second brigade to our right was that magnificent Fifteenth Ohio, and Capt J.G. Bird was wounded while leading Company C.

We had been besieged in Chattanooga for two months and had been on very short rations during a greater part of the time.  When we left our tents and camp equippage to open the battle of Chattanooga on November 23d, 1863, we left it not to again camp in or to have a change of clothes or the use of tents for about two months.  At the close of the battle of Chattanooga we were immediately started on a forced march to relieve General Burnside, who was besieged by Longstreet at Knoxville.  From the 23d day of November, 1863, until the 18th  of January, 1864 ( during a winter noted for its cold weather ) we did not have a change of shirts.  [Note: Further it should be mentioned, that the 26th Ohio was encamped in the mountains of eastern Tennessee.] Think you then that it is strange for us to say that we would know a 'grayback' if we met one in the road, or any place else?

We veteranized and came home, or in camp parlance, to 'God's country', for thirty days, visiting loved ones, including the 'girls we left behind us'. The veterans were the most economical soldiers for the government that it ever saw. There was no waste of time in drill and in disciplining and waste or depletion by not being able to stand the service. Everyone of them had been tried by exposure and battle for over two years, and they were perfect  soldiers ready for immediate action. Our furloughs soon expired, and parting once more from home and mother, father, sister, brother. wives and loved ones, we started once more to the front and soon started on the Atlanta campaign, in which our company  and regiment took a prominent part.

We all remember the battles of Rocky Face Ridge, Resaca, Adairsville, Dallas, Kennesaw mountain, June 23d, and again June 27th,  Smyrna Camp Ground, Peach Tree Creek, Atlanta, Jonesboro and Lovejoy Station.  And on the second day of September, 1864, Atlanta was ours.

After a few day' rest we were sent back under that grand old man, Gen. 'Pap' Thomas, while Sherman marched on to the sea.  During this campaign we took a very prominent part in the battle of Spring Hill [Tennessee], where it was supposed for a time that the Twenty-sixth Ohio had been sacrificed to save the army, but they fought their way out, and when  Capt. Raper, riding Colonel Clark's horse, reported to General Wagner that the Twenty-sixth Ohio was coming, in his joy the general rode across the field to meet us, and commenced to express his feelings, but his voice failed him and he turned and rode away. On the following day he passed our regiment and said: ' Boys, I intended to say something nice last evening but I could not do it.'

On the following day, after the battle of Spring Hill, we were at Franklin, and in the thickest of that terrible engagement. Up to that time, during the Hood campaign, we had been fighting against big odds, two or three to our one. Two or three weeks later, however,  when we had been reenforced until our forces were about equal to that of Hood's army, we, under Thomas, utterly destroyed Hood's army at Nashville....

We wintered at Huntsville, Alabama and in the spring of 1865, we went Bud Springs, east Tennessee. It was about dark one evening when a special telegram came announcing  that Lee had surrendered at Appomattox. And you, my comrades, remember the time we had that night.  Among the many things done in our joy over the  news,  with Major Spence to line and that red headed captain of the Fortieth Indiana to lead in the music, was to  sing that old familiar song, 'Go, tell Aunt Rhody, the old gray goose is dead', and all joined in the chorus.

The war was over, but to us there was another disappointment. Maximillion, with the French , was in Mexico, and our Fourth army corps was chosen as one to go to the frontier.  We were compelled to continue our patriotic devotions on the Mexican frontier in Texas. We had, however, nothing to do there and we were mustered out, and arrived at home on the 18th day of November, four years, five months and four days from the day we marched to Gilead Station."

[Note: At the end of the article is a listing of the roll call of 132 members of company E. Information included here has been added to the solders' roster information pages.}