Showing posts with label 181st OH INF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 181st OH INF. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Official Reports of the Campaign in North Alabama and Middle Tennessee, November 14, 1864-January 23, 1865: No. 216. — Report of Lieut. Col. John O'Dowd, One hundred and eighty-first Ohio Infantry, of operations December 7, 1864.

No. 216.

Report of Lieut. Col. John O'Dowd, One hundred and eighty-first Ohio Infantry,
of operations December 7, 1864.

HEADQUARTERS 181ST OHIO VOLUNTEER INFANTRY,        
Fortress Rosecrans, Tenn., December 8, 1864.

COLONEL: I have the honor to report the part taken by my command in the engagement of the 7th.

My regiment was formed west of the Wilkinson pike, with the Eighth Minnesota on my right and the One hundred and seventy-fourth Ohio on my left. I advanced my command on the double-quick about 300 yards, driving the enemy's skirmishers in confusion, and capturing three prisoners. I halted my command for a few moments to form and send forward my skirmishers, encountering the enemy in heavy force in my front. I reported the same to General Milroy. I was immediately ordered to advance through the cornfield. I drove the enemy from the edge of the woods. I halted to form, and found the enemy in my front: occupying a hastily constructed rifle-pit. I charged these works and captured them, killing Colonel Weaver and capturing 2 commissioned officers and 33 men. I formed my command immediately, executing in a northwesterly direction with the intention of capturing a section of artillery that was to my right and rear. The enemy, seeing this movement, commenced falling back as I advanced. My men shot the artillery horses and captured two guns. The enemy's loss in my front will not exceed 25 or 30 killed and wounded.

The following are the number of killed, wounded, and missing in my command: I commissioned officer wounded, 1 enlisted man killed and 33 wounded; aggregate, 35; number of men engaged, 540.

JOHN O'DOWD,        
Lieutenant-Colonel, Commanding 181st Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
[Col. M. T. THOMAS.]

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 45, Part 1 (Serial No. 93), p. 627

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

181st Ohio Infantry

Organized at Camp Dennison, Ohio, and mustered in October 10, 1864. Left State for Huntsville, Ala., October 24. Attached to District of Northern Alabama October, 1864. 1st Brigade, Defences Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, to January, 1865. 3rd Brigade, 2nd Division, 23rd Army Corps, Army of the Ohio and Dept. of North Carolina, to July, 1865.

SERVICE. – Duty at Huntsville and Decatur, Ala., till November, 1864. Moved to Murfreesboro, Tenn., November 30. Siege of Murfreesboro December 5-12. Wilkinson's Pike, near Murfreesboro, December 7 and December 13-14. Duty at Murfreesboro till December 24. Moved to Columbia, Tenn., December 24. Movement to Washington, D.C., thence to Fort Fisher, N. C., January 15 to February 9, 1865. Operations against Hoke February 11-14. Capture of Wilmington February 22. Campaign of the Carolinas March 1-April 26. Advance on Goldsboro March 6-21. Occupation of Goldsboro March 21. Advance on Raleigh April 10-14. Occupation of Raleigh April 14. Bennett's House April 26. Surrender of Johnston and his army. Duty at Raleigh, Greensboro and Salisbury till July. Mustered out July 29, 1865.

Regiment lost during service 5 Enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 1 Officer and 27 Enlisted men by disease. Total 33.

SOURCE: Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Part 3, p. 1554

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Review: For Liberty


By Larry B. Bramble

Larry Bramble in his book “For Liberty: My Ancestor’s Story of Immigration and the Civil War,” does what any good amateur genealogist, or family historian, should do.  He sets the lives of his ancestors in their proper context against the larger historical backdrop.  Unfortunately that is all that can be said about it.

Tracing the military history of his great-great-grandfather, Philip Lenderking, of the 5th Maryland Infantry, and his four brothers; Frederick, of the Fremont Body Guard and the 181st Ohio Infantry; Rudolph, of the 2nd Michigan Infantry; George of the 27th Michigan Infantry and Louis, of the 12th Maryland Infantry; as well as his great-great-grandfather Taugart Snyder of the 12th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

The compiled service records of each featured soldier, and the pension records of Frederick and Philip Lenderking, all from the National Archives, and seven reports from the “Official Records” are the only primary source material I was able to unearth in Mr. Bramble’s bibliography, though there are excerpts from letters mentioned in his text they are not noted in the bibliography.  Mr. Bramble also sighted in his bibliography one magazine article and seven printed works, two of which were the King James Bible and Webster’s Dictionary.  The rest, and indeed a very large percentage of his research, was done online using a wide variety of websites, some more credible than others.  I counted 102 citations to online sources with 28 of them being Wikipedia articles.

Mr. Bramble relates the experiences of his ancestors in a linear narrative, chronologically as they happened.  But with so few primary resources to rely upon, Mr. Bramble is left to give a thumbnail sketch of each battle his family members participated in, gleaned in large part from only secondary sources, with a few statistics thrown in.

Throughout the book are many photographs, illustrations and maps.  Many of the maps are hand-drawn and had to be so reduced in size for publication that many of them are illegible, and therefore are not at all useful in supplementing the text.

What Mr. Bramble has attempted to do is admirable.  It is important to be able to set the lives of your ancestors against the backdrop of the historical past, by doing so you get a much clearer understanding of who they were and where they fit into the larger historical picture.  But with such scant primary resources to pull from, and such heavy use of online and secondary sources, Mr. Bramble has written a book that will only be useful to the members of his family.

ISBN 978-1257976003, Lulu.com, © 2011, Softcover, 268 pages, Maps, Photographs, Illustrations, Footnotes, Bibliography. $16.49.  To purchase click HERE.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Officer’s Circle: Shiloh National Cemetery


UNITED STATES
NATIONAL MILITARY CEMETERY
 PITTSBURG LANDING.

ESTABLISHED 1866.

INTERMENTS 3590.
KNOWN 1229.
UNKNOWN 2361.


Unknown


Corporal, 12th Tennessee Cavalry (USA)

Unknown

1st Lieutenant, Co. C, 21st Missouri Infantry

Private, Co. 1, 181st Ohio Infantry

Quartermaster, USS Essex, United States Navy

Saturday, October 20, 2012

John C Stahel

Private, Co. 1, 181st Ohio Infantry
Died January 15, 1865

Officer’s Circle
Shiloh National Cemetery