Leonard Wolf
Private, Company H

Leonard Wolf was born in Germany on April 15, 1832.

Wolf was signed up for military service on Christmas Day, 1861, at West Jersey, Illinois, by William H. Greenwood, lieutenant-to-be of Company H of the Fifty-First Illinois Infantry. His military career got off to a rocky start, health-wise, and came to a quick end. At the time he enlisted, Wolf was troubled by a condition that doctors called "chronic bronchitis". He lasted through the cold months of training at Camp Douglas in Chicago and moved with the regiment to the staging area at Cairo, Illinois.

Wolf was discharged at Cairo on April 7, 1862 the same day the Fifty-First Illinois was involved in the final events of the Confederate surrender at Island No. 10. Wolf's discharge was signed by John Pashley, Assistant Surgeon of the Fifty-First, who was at that time "in charge of sick in barracks". Very likely, Wolf was not able to accompany the regiment to the field (New Madrid, Island No. 10, etc.) but rather spent his short army career confined to the barracks at Cairo.

Wolf earned his living variously after the war. The 1880 census finds him keeping saloon in Bussey, Iowa, southeast of Des Moines. In 1900, Wolf was still in Bussey, but his occupation was listed as "coal miner". Wolf and his wife Lucy (born in New Jersey) raised a large family. Several of their children died in childhood, but in 1903 eleven of their children were alive and growing old. Wolf was admitted for residency to the Old Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy, Illinois on January 17, 1903. By then his wife was dead. Wolf lived on in the Quincy soldiers home until his death on October 22, 1911. He was seventy-eight years old. According to Wolf's great great grandson, at the genweb Illinois in the Civil War site, Wolf was buried in the Old Soldiers and Sailors Cemetery, the cemetery (now sometimes known as Sunset Cemetery) affiliated with the Home.

Sources:
Leonard Wolf, Compiled Service Record, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

Wolf's residence at Quincy soldiers home: State of Illinois Soldiers and Sailors Home Records and Records of Illinois Soldiers and Sailors Home, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, Illinois.

United States Census, 1880, 1900.