MEMBERS OF THE FIFTY-FIRST ILLINOIS INFANTRY
A few who returned to their pre-war communities in Rock Island County, settled, remained,
and lived out their lives within a few or a few thousand yards of the Mississippi.
Old Port Byron Cemetery: Sheppard and Case
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A view of the "Old Port Byron" cemetery is shown at left. The number of burials
there is relatively small. The cemetery clings to small hilly hillsides. The Oak Grove Cemetery became the main community cemetery once
it was established in 1866, and the Old Port Byron cemetery fell out of common use.
In the picture at left you see a way leading through the cemetery. It is guarded on the foreground end by the Fifty-First Illinois Infantry. The obelisk at left belongs to the Sheppard family. James Sheppard was a member of Company H. A hundred yards, diagonally, ahead and to the right, on one of the hillsides, is the grave of "Old" John Case of Company H. |
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At Left: the Sheppard family obelisk with the James Sheppard stone at its foot. Above: a closer view of the James Sheppard stone. James Sheppard was the second-born of the large family of William and Ann Sheppard. William was a native of Scotland, Ann of England. Their first three children were born in New York, the others after they migrated to Illinois. William, the father, was a miller in the town of Port Byron. James, the son, enlisted in the Fifty-First in December, 1861. He was seventeen years old. James fell ill in December 1862, shortly before the Battle of Stones River and was sent to military hospital. He died there on January 19, 1863, of typhoid fever, and was buried there. His remains were subsequently removed to Port Byron. His gravestone reads "1862", but in January 1862 the regiment had not yet left Chicago for "the war". The correct year, adduced in all the military records, is 1863. |
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At Left: the Case hillside plot in the Old Port Byron Cemetery. There are more family stones than are shown here, where the
picture captures only the smallish stone of John and the larger one of his wife Louisa.
Above: a closer view of the John Case stone. |
| John Case was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania circa 1816. Case and wife, born Louisa Noel, started raising a family in Pennsylvania and removed to Illinois around 1855. In December 1861, Rev. John Whitson signed him up to serve in Company H of the Fifty-First Illinois. Starting in May 1863, Case spent almost all the remaining months of his career with the regiment in hospitals in Murfreesboro or Nashville—due to a chronic disease of the eyes. Sickly, he never reenlisted for a second term of service when most of the rest of the men reenlisted in December, 1863. He was still absent, sick, from the regiment when he was discharged in January, 1865. He reported to the Adjutant General's Office in Springfield in late February for formal muster-out. After the war, Case returned to his family in Illinois. He and Louisa had at least six children. [Port Byron Globe, December 30, 1892] |
The "New" Port Byron Cemetery, Oak Grove: Trent, Metzgar, Allen
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| Oak Grove Cemetery is located within the bounds of the town of Port Byron, spreading across hills. | Above: looking west toward the sunned Mississippi River from a high hill in the fore part of the cemetery. |
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Above: the grave of Simon Trent on the left and of his wife Flora Van
Order Trent on the right. |
Several men of Company H and from Port Byron (e.g. David Reed, Alexander Jack) were wounded,
captured, paroled and sent through the Union lines, by the same sequence that Trent was. The seriously wounded of the regiment
recovered in hospitals in Nashville; some of them were able to go home in December and January for brief furloughs; they then
reported to Benton Barracks in St. Louis, one of the Federal parole camps, where they awaited exchange. Trent's wound was too
serious, and he was sent to Camp Chase, Ohio, which functioned as a parole camp but also provided medical treatment of the kind
Trent needed. Nonetheless, in February, when the regiment was in Chicago on reenlistment furlough and preparing to return to the
front, Trent, on crutches, traveled to Chicago. There he met Colonel Luther Bradley, who had nearly recovered from his Chickamauga wounds,
and Bradley told him that his (Trent's) condition would make him useless in camp and medical care in camp would not be of the
best—stay put in Illinois. Trent did. In fact, he was never able to return to the regiment. He was eventually mustered out
formally—on June 15, 1864. At the same time, he was finally mustered in officially as second lieutenant of Company H, to date back
to June 12, 1863. His $5-per-month pension, his initial pension as a wounded veteran, also dated to June 15, 1864. Trent was troubled by eye disease for the rest of his life, and this eye condition contributed its disability portion to the amount he received as a pension. Most of his pension stemmed from the severe wound to his leg. The femur was fractured and was not healed properly. It knit back together but not with the two pieces of bone end to end but rather offset ("overlapping," his physicians sometimes called it), so that Trent's left leg was curved and therefore almost two inches shorter than the right. He walked with a horrible limp—and a walking stick. One of his physicians (W. H. Ludewig) wrote, "Claimant is certainly a cripple on account of this leg." Trent's war wound put a stop to his pre-war wagoner career. He opened a general store, selling groceries and dry goods, in Port Byron to support his family while at the same time sparing his leg. In the early 1890s Trent became an entrepreneur in the lime kiln business that was begining to prosper around Port Byron. He gradually transitioned completely out of his retail activities. In 1893, he tried unsuccessfully to be elected postmaster, a paying position and one fit for a cripple. He was often elected to city and sometimes county posts, as well as to offices in the local hierarchy of the Grand Army of the Republic, Post 603. Trent was the solicitous dean of the veterans of the regiment in the Port Byron corner of Illinois. He testified in their behalf at pension hearings, he employed them, he opened his house to the periodic reunions of Companies H and K, he helped align the affairs of the old veteran John Case when Case could no longer take care of himself and his family was doing a poor job of it.. Flora Trent lived until December 14, 1916. |
 Above: Stephen Allen family stone in Oak Grove Cemetery, Port Byron. Above right: the fading regimental marker for Stephen Allen. Stephen Allen was one of the youngest members of Company H. He was only 15 when he signed up. Whereas many of the Rock Island County members of Company H were born in eastern states (especially Pennsylvania) and migrated west before the Civil War, Allen was actually born in the county. He was the fourth of ten children of Samuel (born in New York, circa 1811) and Mary Allen (born Indiana, circa 1822). The parents left Indiana for Illinois and Coe Township around 1843 or 1844. During June-July-August, 1862, Allen was ill first at the federal military hospital at Farmington, Mississippi, then at home in Port Byron to recover, then in the federal hospital at Keokuk, Iowa. At the end of July, Allen, released from the hospital in Keokuk, was arrested in Rock Island for being absent without leave. He was transported south, back to the regiment, where in the course of time, he achieved the official status of deserter, on October 1, 1862 at Corinth—"considered deserted by having been absent without leave for two months." |
 In September, 1863, Allen, with the regiment in Tennessee and Georgia, was awaiting court martial on the desertion charges. Chickamauga intervened. On the second day of battle, September 20, 1863, Allen was assisting as a hospital steward when the Federal right wing collapsed and he and many hospital physicians, nurses and other stewards were taken captive. Allen was confined in Confederate prisons in Richmond, Danville, and Andersonville. He was released in March 1865 and paid his final dues with the regiment by tending the regiments horses in New Orleans while the regiment was stationed in Texas. Allen was discharged and mustered out in September. The wheels of military justice continued to turn and in November orders were issued that Allen should be dishonorably discharged because of desertion. By then, the Fifty-First no longer existed and the last lieutenant of Company H (William Chenoworth) informed the Adjutant General's Office that Allen was already mustered out. And, there the thread of information breaks. From census records and The Port Byron Globe there are just a few more things known about Stephen Allen after the war. He first returned to Coe Township and took up farming (probably not as a landowner). He married his wife Lucy around 1871. For twenty years he worked in the lime kilns owned by his old company-mate Henry Trent. The 1910 census lists him as a mail carrier. By 1920, he was retired and, by 1927, dead. |
Marcellus Metzgar was born in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, on April 16, 1843. Metzgar
signed on with Company
H in 1861. The 1860 census shows Marcellus working in Port Byron as a clerk in his father's dry goods store. Military records also
show
his occupation as "clerk" at the time he enlisted. His skills as a clerk brought him appropriate assignments in the
regiment. In August, 1862, he was detailed as clerk to the regimental adjutant (Charles W. Davis at that time). He drew other
detached-service assignments to go with his clerking duties: in June 1863, he was left in Murfreesboro in charge of the regimental
baggage. In February, 1864, when most of the men of the regiment, including a number of those of Company H, went home on
reenlistment furlough, Metzgar (who did not reenlist) stayed on, on duty in Chattanooga. He served as clerk for the Sanitary
Commission (His regimental comrade Edward Tabler, also not reenlisting, also therefore not entitled to a reenlistment furlough, stayed on in Chattannooga to work in the Sanitary Commission's sanitary Garden, until the rest of the regiment returned from Chicago furlough). The regimental surgeon Thomas Magee certified, just before Metzgar started his duties with the Sanitary Commission, that Metzgar "has been unable to perform field
service, not having physical ability to endure the hardships incident to campaigning. He has been acting as clerk in the
Adjutant's office for near two years and I would recommend that he be detailed in that capacity." See "Tabler's Sanitary Garden" for more on these no-furlough assignments. In April 1864, Metzgar was
transferred to the Signal Corps for the final nine or ten months of his military service. |
 After the war, Metzgar began to thrive. He married Mary E. Brown at the Port Byron Congregational church. They
had two children: Judson, born December 5, 1870 and Frank, born September 24, 1874. The 1880 census lists Marcellus as a traveling
salesman—"traveling man", the census-takers called the occupation. In 1882 Metzgar moved next
door to Moline. In Moline Metzgar worked for the post office and engaged in an organ-manufacturing business, the Bennett Organ
Company. He gradually, sometime after 1885, transitioned completely out of his traveling sales work. The last census glimpse we have of him is given by the 1920 census.
Metzgar, retired and widowed, was living in St. Cloud, Florida. Metzgar spent the decade of the 1920s partly in St. Cloud and
partly in Moline, Illinois.He died on January 6, 1929. He was interred in Port Byron's Oak Grove Cemetery. |
Cordova Cemetery: Abbott
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Several men from the town and township of Cordova enlisted in the Fifty-First
Illinois. Isaac Abbott was one of them and the only one who returned home to Cordova after his career with the regiment, lived there the rest of his
life, and was buried in Cordova Cemetery. Abbott was one of the oldest men to enlist in the regiment, being fifty-eight years old
at the time of muster-in. By trade, Abbott was a stone mason; with the Fifty-First Illinois, he was made the regimental wagoner.
On May 12, 1862, he was elevated to the position of divisional saddler. The ardors of camp life in Missouri, Mississippi, and
Tennessee caught up with Abbott, and he was formally discharged on December 3, 1862, on account of "old age and asthma
contracted while in the service". Abbott was born in Hunterdon County, New Jersey (a county now submerged in the New York metropolitan district) in about 1805. The 1850 census finds him in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, at work as a mason, married to Helen and raising several children. By 1860, Isaac and Helen were living in Cordova—and here he enlisted in Company H. After the war, Abbott continued to work as a mason in Cordova. Abbott died in 1888. The June 1, 1888 Port Byron Globe ran this small story: "Isaac Abbott came near losing his life Wednesday afternoon about 4 o'clock. He was sauntering along the railroad when the passenger train came in sight. The train whistled twice before Mr. Abbott stepped off and then just in time to miss the engine, which swept by with its usual speed. The baggage car, which projects farther on either side of the track than the locomotive, struck him on the shoulder, hurling him to the ground with such force as to break his arm and otherwise doing him considerable damage. The hand-car was immediately dispatched after him, and he was taken home. Dr. Freek waas called in and dressed his wounds. We hope he may recover, but his age and ill health are against him." |
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Picture at Lower Left: The Isaac Abbott gravestone in its solitude. Picture at Lower Right: Closer to the weathered stone. One can make out a few letters of the "Isaac", part of the "Abbott", and the "51st Ill Inf". (Thanks to Eleanor of the Cordova Public Library for help locating the Isaac Abbott grave.) |
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Pleasant Point Cemetery, Coe Township: Nicholson
 William Francis Nicholson was born February 5, 1841 in Green County, Illinois. His father Miles was born in New York, but left
there before beginning to raise a family. By the time William enlisted in Company H, the Nicholson family had settled in Coe
Township, Rock Island County.William went through the early and middle campaigns of the regiment without a scratch and reenlisted in the Fifty-First Illinois in December, 1863. His Company H comrades called him "Billy Nick". His luck ran out in the spring campaign of 1864; he was wounded by a gunshot to the foot on May 14, 1864, near Dalton, Georgia as Sherman's Georgia campaign got underway. Benjamin Golden of Company H recollected, for a pension hearing for Nicholson, he "received gun shot in his foot while making a charge upon the Rebel works." Golden said he had personal knowledge of the event, "being with him at the time and I saw him took off the field." Louis Genung and Daniel Gregg of Company H and Port Byron testified similarly. Charles McHenry, of Company H, said that he had consulted the diary he kept while in the service, "I was in line of battle with the Co. that day, Co. commanded by Captain Lester [Lester was killed the next day]. Nicholson was missing that night & returned wounded, was a good faithful soldier... While in the line of duty [Nicholson] received a gun shot wound in the right foot in the Battle of Resaca, Ga., was taken to the hospital, was absent from the company three months, came back to the company unfit for duty by reason of wound, was detailed as orderly at corps headquarters where he remained until the close of the war." |
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| While Nicholson was in military hospitals, gangrene set in, worsening his condition and making the wound a permanent problem, but nonetheless he healed and escaped amputation—and carried out his duties as an orderly on the staff of General David Stanley until his formal discharge.
He was mustered out with the rest of the regiment on September 25, 1865. After the war William Nicholson returned to Port Byron and Coe Township. At first he farmed in Coe when his lame foot would let him ("He can walk well enough for a short distance," one of his doctors wrote, "But when working in the field it pains him so that he has to give up work.") Early in 1892 Nicholson rented out his farm. He subsequently engaged in retail undertakings in Port Byron where two good feet were not so necessary and for long periods served as the town marshall. Eventually, in the autumn of 1893, he sold his eighty acres of good Coe farm land. His wife Mary took up millinery and sold hats to women of Port Byron. William outlived Mary. He moved into the Soldiers and Sailors home in Quincy in the early 1900s (where he found a number of other members of the Fifty-First domiciled); he lived there for fifteen years. Nicholson outlived the bicycle craze in Port Byron. Henry Trent died. George Spaid died. Then of all his old comrades in Illinois only Stephen Allen and Marcellus Metzgar remained, and Nicholson outlived them, even Stephen Allen, five years his junior. Allen died in 1927, Metzgar in 1929. Nicholson outlived everyone. He even outlived himself: his doctor, Dr. Albert Beal, indicated in this 1928 statement, "The undersigned represents that William F. Nicholson...is ninety years of age and that his physical condition is such that he requires some assistance in dressing, that he feeds himself with difficulty; that almost daily the calls of nature are such that he is unable to control action of bowels; that he is able to walk around, but is in constant danger of falling on account of vertigo, so that he should be under constant observation and care of another person." He outlived the last of the Company H reunions; there was no one but him to attend. He long outlived World War I. He left the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy and moved to Moline where his oldest son Miles, almost sixty years old, could watch over him. He outlived the Hoover administration and survived the Great Depression. Rogers Hornsby's career wound down in Chicago. Fritz von Papen bargained power with an Adolf Hitler in Germany. Georgia in 1864 was sixty-six years gone. On August 4, 1932, Nicholson, having outlived everything but the hills, went for a walk in Moline—and was struck by an automobile; he died within hours and two days later was buried in Pleasant Point Cemetery, one of Coe Township's two cemeteries. So that I can be taken care of in my old age. William Nicholson wrote the note (at right) as the cover for an affidavit and other papers he was sending to the Bureau of Pensions by way of requesting an increase in his pension. He was almost ninety years old at the time. |
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Nicholson Picture and Obituary from Moline Daily Dispatch, August 5, 1932. William F. Nicholson, aged 94, of 1348 9th avenue, East Moline, who died at the Moline city hospital at 2:43 yesterday afternoon, an hour after he was struck by an automoble, was a veteran of the Civil War, and one of the oldest members of John Buford post, G.A.R., of Rock Island. He formerly resided in Moline and in Rock Island. Funeral services for Mr. Nicholson will be held at 2 tomorrow afternoon in Grace Methodist Church, East Moline, the Rev. E. D. Palmer officiating. Members of the G.A.R. in Moline and Rock Island are expected to attend. The aged Civil War veteran will be buried in Pleasant Point cemetery in Coe township, where he formerly resided. He had resided in Rock Island county for more than three-quarters of a century. Mr. Nicholson was crossing 2-W avenue at Nineteenth street in the Watertown section of East Moline when he was struck by an automobile driven by Otto Bossow, a resident of Campbell's island. Bossow was turning from Nineteenth street into 2-W avenue. The Civil War veteran was struck in the chest by the fender of the automobile. Several of his ribs were fractured and he incurred internal injuries. Warren Morris of Moline, driving an automobile, saw the accident and with the aid of Bossow picked the injured man up and took him to the Moline city hospital in his (Morris') car. Dr. J. H. Fowler called. Mr. Nicholson was unconscious when he was picked up and remained unconscious until he died an hour later. Driver Not Held. Morris and Bossow remained at the hospital until Nicholson died and Bossow then returned to East Moline where he reported the accident to police. He was not held. Bossow, Morris, and Charles Filbert, another witness, said the accident was unavoidable. An inquest is scheduled to be held in Primm funeral home this afternoon. The body will be remain in the funeral home until the services Saturday afternoon. Mr. Nicholson was born in Greene county, Illinois, on Feb. 5, 1838. When a youth, he came to Rock Island county with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Miles Nicholson, and the family resided on a farm in Coe township for some years. Mr. Nicholson enlisted in the Union Army when the Civil War broke out, serving in Company H, 51st Illinois infantry. After the war he lived in Rock Island for a number of years, and for some time was deputy sheriff. He married Mary Smith in Rock Island on Dec. 25, 1867. His wife died in 1920. For some years Mr. Nicholson resided at Port Byron. He later lived at Moline, and for a time at Quincy, and then returned to this county and recently had been residing with his son in East Moline. He was a member of the Methodist church. Surviving are four sons, Miles of East Moline, Jess of Moline, William of Hillsdale and Albert of Quincy; twelve grandchildren and twenty-seven grandchildren. |
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Fairfield Cemetery, Coe Township: Spaid
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| George Spaid is buried in the Fairfield Cemetery in Coe Township. Born:
August 10, 1839. Died: July 5, 1907. He was born in Henry County, Illinois. He moved, with the rest of his father's family, to
Port Byron in the 1850s. In 1859, Spaid went in search of his place in the world. He wrote, "I resided at Port Byron for a
number of years until the spring of 1859 when I removed to Frederic Town, Madison Co., Mo. and resided there until November 1859
when I removed to Sharon, Mercer Co., Penn. and stayed there until the spring of 1860. From there I went to Warren, Warren Co.,
Ohio, left there in the spring of 1861 in May, came back to Port Byron, Ills and resided there until I enlisted. When at Port
Byron, Ills, I worked at farming, at Sharon Pa I worked in a livery stable, when at Warren, Ohio I worked at drilling oil
wells." Spaid was twenty-three years old when he enlisted in Company H in December, 1861. He was promoted to sergeant early in 1862, but his active military career was to be short-lived. He suffered a spinal injury at Michellville, Tennessee on November 6, 1862. "We were ordered or detailed to guard a train of commissary stores and for that purpose marched from Nashville, Teen. to Mitchellville, and on the night of the day I received my injury I with others was ordered to collect fuel for campfires. Where we camped considerable timber had been felled and while I was assisting to carry a log, two soldiers carrying the front end and two the rear end with hand spikes. I had hold of the hind end of the log and while carrying it the man at the rear and next to me stumbled and let the weight of the log upon me, which so wounded and jerked my back as to wound my spine. From that time on I was never reported for duty to my knowledge but did do light duty of my own accord." The injury led to his disability discharge on March 23, 1863. After his discharge Spaid returned to Port Byron and waited for his back to heal. He married Minerva Powell on August 6, 1865 at Port Byron (she was born in Kentucky on February 26, 1842, her father, William, having migrated from Virginia to Kentucky and eventually to Port Byron, where he made shoes). Spaid took up farming, but the back injury worked against him. "After I returned to Port Byron, Ills lived there until the spring of 1867 and when able worked at farming, moved to Iowa in the spring of 1867 to or near West Dayton, Webster Co., Iowa and carried on the business of farming at that place until the fall of 1868 when I removed to Whiteside County, Illinois (P. O. Albany, Ills) at which place I farmed until the fall of 1872 when I removed to Coe (P. O. Port Byron), Rock Island Co., Ills, where I remained on a farm, farming as much as I was able, until the month of Nov. 1877 when I removed to Port Byron Ills and have lived there ever since and have been engaged in keeping a hardware store and tin shop since Nov 1877." Spaid wrote the foregoing in the early 1880s. He secured a Federal pension for his back injury. By 1900, according to the United States census, Spaid was living to the east of Port Byron in Coe Township and once again, by some means or other, farming or having his farm farmed. Spaid did not live to a ripe old age. He died on July 5, 1907 and was buried at the Fairfield Cemetery. |
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Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Zuma Township: White
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| Above left: front gate of Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Zuma township.
Above right: Weathered gravestone of Company H's William White. William F. White was born in April, 1827 in Bradford, Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the Fifty-First Illinois Infantry in December, 1861. His active military career with the regiment was destined to be short. He was with the regiment through the New Madrid/Island No. 10 campaign and the first two or three weeks of the approach from the Tennessee River through Farmington to Corinth, Mississippi. But, in mid-may 1862, he was sent to the military hospital at Hamburg Landing, Tennessee. His condition worsened and he was sent on to the hospital in Evansville, Indiana. On August 18, 1862, he was allowed to return to Zuma on sick leave. He never returned to the regiment. The staff of the regiment, not apprised of White's whereabouts in anything like a timely fashion, declared him a deserter as of October 1, 1862. The charge of desertion was subsequently removed, as White had formally been absent-sick until November 14, 1862 at which time he was discharged based on a certificate of disability, due to "anchylosis of the left knee joint," abnormal bone fusion—White couldn't march and couldn't do fatigue duty. On September 10, 1865, White married Emily Kem of Indian Creek, Indiana (Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763–1900); she was more than fifteen years younger than he. The 1870 U.S. census lists White as living in Hampton Township, next to Zuma, and farming. The Whites had a four-year-old daughter, Maria. The 1880 census finds White in Zuma Township, farming. There were three children and a mother-in-law in the family. White spent the rest of his life in Zuma Township, farming, and, when he died in 1902, he was buried in the township's Mount Pleasant Cemetery. |
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Sources:
The Port Byron Globe, United States Census, Compiled Service Records and Pension Files from National Archives, Washington D. C.
William Nicholson's residence at Quincy soldiers home: State of Illinois Soldiers and Sailors Home Records