Our Soldiers Living and Dead
Grant County heroes of many wars who left a trail of blood on many battlefields.

After dwelling so long, and with such amplitude of treatment upon the plain scenes and characters of civil life, in addition to the more pleasing attractive features of it's essential social side, it may be permitted us to devote a portion of these columns to our soldiers, living and dead, as they appear before out mind's eye in all the pomp and circumstance of war-those military heroes who, form time to time, went forth from Grant County to distinguish themselves b a record for personal and conspicuous bravery on the field, a record which is today the heritage and pride of their children. It is much to be deplored that no history of them has ever been written and no detailed account of their careers been give to the public. Our only wish is that we might accomplish such a work, for we are sure that in it there would be presented to our readers a signal story of patriotism and virtue and manly endurance, well worth the very tenderest perpetuation in the remembrance of every citizen of this county. But, since so pious a hope is at present impossible of fulfillment, and the slenderness of the facts within our reach forbids even an attempt at any conned narrative, we must content ourselves with the most cursory mention of names, and such meager incidents as are to be found in the traditions of the neighborhood.

Although Kentucky was not admitted into the Union until some eight or nine years after the close of the Revolutionary War, the county of Grant beginning its separate existence at a much later date, yet her backwoods bore no inconsiderable part in that great struggle. It was the unerring aim, behind the flintlocks of the "fierce men from Kentucky," that made doubly sure the defeat of the British legions at Kings Mountain, and sent the sanguinary and ferocious Ferguson to his merited death. It is said that Col. Campbell, who commanded the Americans on that occasion, always selected the Kentuckians whenever he desired to send forward a forlorn hope, and often staked the safety of his little army on their skill and knowledge as scouts.

Among the grim and daring old pioneers, who fought with Greene and Morgan at Cowpens, Guilford Court House, and Eutaw Springs, and followed those brilliant leaders, in their marches and counter marches, against Cornwallis through North Carolina and Virginia, were a number of Kentuckians who, at a subsequent period, helped to blaze a path through the remote wilderness of Grant County, and plant here in its place the altars of our Christian civilization. The roster of their names even, is unhappily not complete; but it is sufficient to elicit our deepest gratitude, for us to know that they contributed to promote our progress, as well as to crush our enemies. Had it not been for their adaptability to the times, their energy, their resolution and their resourcefulness, our county would not be what it is today. They need not the offices of the flatterer and the economist, for their great deeds, their soldiery qualities, and their genuine love of country beggar all panegyric of its value and outpraise all eulogy.

We are only able to recall the names of such men as Hezekiah Thomas, Daniel Sewards, and John Zinn, who stormed the redoubt with Col. Hamilton at Yorktown; as William Arnold, the friend of Lafayette and a master spirit in our early annals; as Bennett Williams, William Norton, and Joseph Spencer, brave old Indian fighters, and each one a noble specimen of the warriors of Kentucky's forest days; as Jacob New and Aaron Adams, of whom it is related that they served under George Rogers Clarke, in his execution of that brilliant plan, which he conceived, of paralyzing the influence of Great Britain with the Indian tribes by the reduction of the British posts on the Wabash.

In company with these revolutionary heroes, there was a younger set of men, soldiers of the war of 1812, who, as much as their older comrades, became the heralds of the greatness, the riches, and the cohesion of interests which now characterize our people. These latter were more numerous than the former. Nearly all of them were well known to the older citizens of the county, and their names are familiar to the youngest generation. These men, in their lives and character, were fit types of that great and noble race by whom this lovely land was won from all foreign encroachment and by whom the foundations of our beloved commonwealth were laid.

There was William Gray, grandfather of our able and eloquent Commonwealth's attorney; Robert Jump, an old magistrate and farmer; Harmon Childers, another magistrate and surveyor; James Howe, who lived for many years on the Littell farm near town, and, dying in 1850, was buried by the militia with all the honors of war; Icabod Ashcraft, Isaac Biddle, George Huffman, Noah Clifton, Joseph Zinn, John Hendrix, and a host of others whose names are still borne in our midst by a clean, thrifty, and honorable posterity. The peaceful sequel of their careers, which we have here indicated but slightly, was in pleasant contrast to the storm and passion of the scenes in which their early manhood was passed.

Some of them followed the glorious old Shelby, when, after the mournful disaster of the Raisin, in which the blossom of Kentucky's chivalry was cropped in so cruel a sacrifice, he was called to retrieve the northwestern frontier. A few of them were carried as captives amidst the snow of an inhospitable climate, and languished in the British prisons until the end of the hostilities. Many of them were led by Col. M. Johnson in that furious charge upon the British regulars at the battle of the Thames where, no doubt, they glutted well their vengeance for the inhuman massacre of the country men by a savage foe. All of them served through the remainder of the war with fidelity and courage, and attested their claims to future honor and renown by brilliant deeds in a hundred gallant fights.

Not merely in these actions, impetuous and dauntless though they were, does their fame repose; as we have already seen, they had less bloody glories, for in common with the Revolutionary veterans, they aided in sweeping every trace of the primeval forest from the broad fields about us that smile today in bold and fruitful plenty beneath their native skies, in preserving the highways of traffic safe and free from all molestation, in overcoming the manifold obstacles of nature, in establishing agriculture, in pioneering the way commerce, and in keeping its paths clear. With single-hearted fortitude, still valorous and patient, they exchanged the sword for the ploughshare; and, applying themselves to the arts of peace found in the affection and esteem of their contemporaries an abundant reward for all their sufferings.

When war was declared against Mexico back in the forties, the old soldiers of Grant County again burnished up their rusty arms and saluted Uncle Sam. As the Stars and Stripes were waved over the ancient capital of the Montezumas, they were there to see it done. Our information in this connection is not very satisfactory; but it is safe to say that not less than a hundred of Grant County men enlisted. The names of some of them appear on the roll of the killed and wounded after the battles of Cerro Gordo and Churubusco. It was in commemoration of the brave Kentuckian who fell at Buena Vista that Col. Theodore O'Hara-a Kentuckian himself, and one of the officers who were promoted on that battlefield for distinguished bravery of conduct-wrote the martial elegy which so appropriately occupies a place on this page. It is not known that any Grant County man was among the slain in this memorable engagement, where Kentucky valor and Kentucky manhood rose once more triumphant, on a bloody eminence, o'er "war's wild note and glory's peal."

Just about the close of our troubles with Mexico, a company of romantic filibusters, panting to extend the blessings of free government to down-trodden Cuba, left Key West for her lovely shores under the leadership of the unfortunate but chivalric Lopez. Before the expedition was under way it was joined by about on hundred and fifty men recruited from northern Kentucky. At their head as would naturally be expected, was a Grant County man, DR. S. S. Scott, at that time a resident of Williamstown, though years afterwards he moved out of the county and now lives in Erlanger. With him there was John Daniel Lawless who, until recent years, was a familiar and picturesque figure on our streets. Dr. William H. Hardy, another Grant county man, also accompanied them, and his brother, Richard Hardy, who afterward wrote a bright and entertaining account of the enterprise. It is probably that other men from the county embarked in this ill-fated affair, but we have no way of ascertaining the facts.

But it was the great Civil War between the states which left the most melancholy mark upon Grant County and called for her sons to enact their varied parts beneath the tragic emblazonries of that awful event. Then it was that we saw the people of Grant County trampled under foot by conquering armies. Then it was that they bowed their heads before unparalleled storms and wept over the bloody crimes they were powerless to prevent. Then it was that the golden dawn of their nascent prosperity sickened, for four long years, under an almost stationary eclipse. Then it was that all their martial instincts were unchained and hundreds put on the uniform of their choice to seek the bubble fame at the very cannon's mouth.

When hostilities began in full earnest, and the whole country burst into a burning torrent of enthusiasm, there were over five hundred men from Grant County, who volunteered their services in the cause of the Union; and perhaps an equal number, from first last, joined the Confederate armies. In the terrible pitched battles of that disastrous conflict which resounded to the ends of the earth and made even Europe, long habituated to wars and bloodshed, stand aghast at such unprecedented slaughter; in sudden and bitter affrays along the skirmish lines where so many gallant fellows bit the dust; in wild midnight sorties and single combats and perilous scouting; in all the turmoil, and horror, and desolation, and blight of that cataclysmic period, the men of Grant County so demeaned themselves, beneath their respective banners, as to set the very stamp and seal of all chivalric qualities upon them.

Of recent years, the old Federal soldiers still living in the county have organized an army post, known as the Thomas Rankin Post No. 73, with R. C. Blaine, Commander. It has a large membership, and, on Decoration Day as it annually recurs the members foregather to honor the dead and renew among themselves the good comradeship of the days when they fought, on a score of stricken fields, to preserve their government against the assaults of a formidable and ill-starred rebellion.

The surviving Confederate soldiers are few in number. Most of them are well known citizens and all of them made gallant records during the war. There are possibly thirty-two or three left out of the hundreds who marched southward so many years ago to vindicate with their blood their unalterable devotion to the principles in which they most ardently believed. Last September a re-union of the Fourth Confederate Cavalry Association (Kentucky) was held in a grove near town. The presence of an immense crowd gave an unusual importance to the affair, and clearly showed the sympathy and interest of the people.

The limits of so hasty an article as this forbid us to indulge our disposition to further comment on these matters, or to take special notice of any particular individual. Both those who wore the blue and those who wore the gray are enshrined in the hearts of the whole community. The spontaneity and the sincerity of their re-united affections, the closer welding in intimacy of heart with heart, the pure nature of the new ties which bind them together, after such lamentable divisions in fraternal peace and love-all this is the wonder and the applause of the wide world.

It brightens and sweetens their lives; and gives us, who are their children, a high and healthy standard by which to judge each other. In a commercial and financial age like ours, it is perhaps the best thing we have. It marks a new epoch in the history of Grant County, as well as in that of the rest of the country, and closes in our political annals, a chapter teeming with incidents of passion and strife, of self-sacrifice and hatred, of anguish and shame, of blood and tears.

The recent Spanish-American war was another momentous event in our annals, which engaged the imagination and aroused the war like inclinations of a large number of Grant County men. That conflict had many curious aspects from a political standpoint, and appealed to different persons in many varied ways. It was as much misunderstood on the one hand, as it was unduly exalted on the other. The truth is that it smacked decidedly of a spirit of careless adventure, and had about it something of the tinge of mere aggrandizement and conquest. And all this, too, in spite of the high motives, underlying the action of the American Congress, in reference to the Spanish occupancy of Cuba, and the fact that the war was undertaken by our government to redress what all the world recognized as glaring social wrongs and unspeakable outrages committed upon a defenseless community, which, for centuries had groaned in hopeless bondage beneath the lash of an insatiable taskmaster. Besides, as we were dealing with an effete monarchy, supported by a weak and enervated people, there was, in this country, no fear of invasion from the Spanish armies, nor was there the least apprehension that the safety of our commerce would be jeopardized at any point.

For these reasons it was essentially a young man's war, and, outside of professional army circles, appealed most strongly to young men of adventurous spirit who were free from any strenuous ties or serious family responsibilities. As this was the case elsewhere in the country, so it was the case in Grant County. Most of those who went from this place were mere boys, or young men who had barely passed their majority. Among their number were to be found the sons of old soldiers, who served on either side during our Civil War, emulating together, beneath a common flag that courage and heroism which their fathers displayed, in the sixties, beneath separate and opposing ones. There was of these volunteers a goodly company, and still others who were recruited for the regular service. We are unable at present to give you even an approximately correct list of their names.  Robert D. Blaine and Orla Robinson, both corporals, served through the war and in the Philippines. Will Brown, Russell O'Banion and the WORKS boys were also in the Philippines. Besides these there were Clarence Hensley, Claude Page, Ross, McLain, Edward Clark, F. M. Brock, Sercy Ashcraft, William Jenkins and Charlie Clark - all of these very young men-and quite a number of other boys who saw plenty of hard and dangerous service in Cuba and the Philippines.

The Williamstown Courier, May 30, 1901
Reprinted by the Grant County Historical Society
September 19, 1981