Corporal Jacob R. Kelsey

The name of one soldier belonging to Company B, and enlisting from Polk County, on the first organization of the company, and who doubtless lost his life, has been omitted in the foregoing record. Captain Studer kindly furnished the following history: —

"CORPORAL JACOB R. KELSEY, Resident of Des Moines, native of Ohio, was a splendid man, and one of the best and promptest non-commissioned officers in the regiment, wherever placed on duty. Some time previous to the departure of the regiment for the field, he had a heavy attack of typhoid fever, at Keokuk, hence was not enabled to participate in the battle of Shiloh; but shortly thereafter returned to his company, and performed, without interruption, faithful duty up to the battle of Corinth, after which battle he was never seen or heard of again. The fight being for some time most desperate, and the regiment under a heavy cross-fire, and nearly flanked, and the order having been given three times by General Crocker for the regiment to fall back on a new line before it was executed (such was the ardor of the men), this soldier fell, most probably wounded, into the hands of the enemy, and must have been carried away by them on their precipitate retreat, when he must have died, or been abandoned dying. At any rate, he was borne on the roll of the company as missing to the end of the war, and no clew of him could be obtained. If any man should endeavor to tarnish this soldier's record by saying that he perhaps went over to the enemy in that battle, I can no more than scorn such an idea, because he was too patriotic, faithful, and brave a man to be guilty of such a charge, all the more because a discharge from the service had been repeatedly offered to him while sick in hospital at Keokuk, which at all times he most emphatically refused to accept, saying that he enlisted to fight Rebels, and that he was bound to do it."

SOURCE: Leonard Brown, American Patriotism: Or, Memoirs Of Common Men, p. 227-8