Company F, Sixteenth Iowa, Etc.

Madison R. Laird, youngest brother of Frank and Jacob M. Laird of this city, was eight months in a rebel prison from which he escaped. He died December 4,1866. John W. Dewey, Q. M. Sergeant, and Thomas J. Allaway, are also numbered among the dead of this Company; also J. F. Redman of Company K.

[Just above this paragraph also appears:]

Levi R. Hester, Sixteenth Iowa, died of wounds received at Iuka.

SOURCE:  Polk County (Iowa). Board of Supervisors, Centennial History of Polk County, Iowa, p. 121

J. F. Redman

Age, twenty-five; residence, Cory Grove, Polk County, Iowa; native of Ohio; enlisted Feb. 14, 1862, and died September 7, 1862, at Bolivar, Tenn., of disease. An intelligent, upright young man; he had been a resident of Iowa about ten years; had many friends; was universally respected. I knew him myself personally. No soldier ever went to the front with more patriotic intentions and motives. He had no desire but to serve his country, in her hour of need. One of the purest and best. He fought bravely in the battle of Shiloh: "As good a soldier as ever shouldered a musket," says a comrade (John A. Emery); "when he found that he could not get well, he became reconciled, and said that 'he was prepared to die, and wished his friends to prepare to meet him in heaven.' He always did his duty faithfully. He was kind to his comrades, and had no enemies except the enemies of his country."

SOURCE: Leonard Brown, American Patriotism: Or, Memoirs Of "Commen Men", p. 237