nobleco_bios

JAMES M. DALZELL was born in Allegheny City, Pa., September 3, 1838. When he was nine years of age his father removed to Ohio. Under great difficulties he succeeded in obtaining an education, and was a junior at Washington College, Pa., at the outbreak of the war.

He served two years as a private in the One Hundred and Sixteenth O. V. I. After the close of the war he studied law, filled a clerkship at Washington, and in 1868 settled permanently in Caldwell. During his life Mr. DALZELL has been a prolific and able writer for the prose; his championship of the cause of the private solder of the Rebellion has been spirited, fearless and influential. Over the signature of Private DALZELL his writings have appeared in almost every newspaper in the land. In 1875, and again in 1877, he was elected to the Ohio Legislature, but withdrew from political life in 1882. He is a very able stump speaker, an ardent Republican, and associate and friend of such men as Sumner Garfield, Hayes, Sherman, and their contemporaries.

Mr. DALZELL was the originator and author of the popular Soldiers” union, now held annually in all parts of the country. Mr. DALZELL takes great pride in his work in behalf of John GRAY, the last soldier of the Revolution. In 1888 Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, published a volume entitled “Private Dalzell.” It contains “My Autobiography,” “My War Sketches,” etc., and “John Gray.” It is an interesting and valuable publication. We quote a retrospect of his political life. “In an evil hour, in the summer of 1885, I foolishly accepted a nomination to the Legislature, was elected, and there ended my prosperity. After the election, in October, my name was in all the papers, congratulations poured in on me from every quarter, and I was invited to take the stump in Pennsylvania, which I did, at a great waste of time and money. I thought nothing of it then. It was only when, years after, I looked into an empty flour barrel and hungry children’s faces and felt in my empty pockets, that I fully apprehended my folly. Four years I now spent in the maelstrom of politics, whirled and tossed about at the caprice of fortune, without any power to control it. I look back on it with pain, . . .It is a grand game, and none but grand men need try to play it. Let men of moderate abilities like myself, keep out of it if they would escape the chagrin and mortification of failure, accentuated with the pangs of poverty.”

WILLIAM H. ENOCHS was born near Middleburg, March 29, 1842, and is the only native of Noble county who attained the rank of General in the late war. He enlisted as a private in April, 1861; saw much hard service and distinguished himself for bravery and gallantry. At twenty-two he commanded a brigade, and at twenty-three he was commissioned Brigadier-General. Ex-President Hayes says of him: “His courage, promptness and energy was extraordinary. His diligence was great and his ability and skill in managing and taking care of his regiment were rarely equalled.” Gen. Enochs is now a prominent lawyer of Ironton, Ohio.

FREEMAN C. THOMPSON was born in Washington county, Pa., February 25, 1846. His family removed to Noble county, Ohio, in 1854. At sixteen years of age he enlisted in the 116^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and in the assault on Fort Gregg, April 2, 1863, he performed the gallant action for which he received a medal of honor by vote of Congress. The County History says:

“In this engagement (which General Grant in his Memoirs says ‘was the most desperate that was seen in the East’), through a perfect tornado of grape and canister, he and his comrade reached the last ditch. How to scale the parapet was a question requiring only a moment for solution. Using each other as ladders they commenced the ascent. Almost at the top one was shot and fell back into the ditch. Thompson was struck twice with a musket and fell into the ditch with several ribs broken, but in short time was again on the top of the parapet fighting with muskets loaded and handed him by his comrades below. Soon the advantage was taken possession of, the whole army swept in and the fort was ours.” In 1865 Mr. Thompson was elected sheriff of Noble county and re-elected at the expiration of his term.

JAMES MADISON TUTTLE was born near Summerfield, Noble county, September 24, 1823. His father removed to Indiana when James was ten years old. James enlisted in the Union army at the outbreak of the war and at the battle of Fort Donelson he gallantly led his regiment into the enemy’s works, it being the first to enter. The tender of this post of honor was first made to several other regiments and declined and Gen. Smith then said to him: “Colonel, will you take those works?” “Support me promptly,” was the response, “and in twenty minutes I will go in.” The Second Iowa “went in” with Col. Tuttle at its head and planted the first Union flag inside Donelson. Col. Tuttle was slightly wounded in this assault, but was able to stay with his command. In June, 1862, he was commissioned Brigadier-General for gallant service in the field.

After the war Gen. Tuttle settled in Des Moines, Iowa, and has been engaged in mining and manufacturing interests. He has been commander of the G. A. R. for the department of Iowa and twice a member of the Iowa Legislature.

John GRAY, the last surviving soldier of the American Revolution, was born at Mount Vernon, Virginia, January 6, 1764, and died at Hiramsburg, Ohio, March 29, 1868, aged 104 years.

His father fell at White Plains, and he, then only about sixteen years of age, promptly volunteered, took up the musket that had fallen from his father’s hands and carried it until the war was over. He was in a skirmish at Williamsburg and was one of the one hundred and fifty men on that dangerous but successful expedition of Mayor Ramsey. He was also at Yorktown at the final surrender, which event occurred in his eighteenth year. He was mustered out at Richmond, Virginia, at the close of the war and returned to field labor near Mount Vernon, his first day’s work after his muster out being performed for General Washington at Mount Vernon. Mr. GRAY married twice in Virginia and once in Ohio. He survived his three wives and all his children, except one daughter, who has since died over eighty years of age, and with whom he resided in Noble county, Ohio, at the time of his death.

In 1795 Mr. GRAY left Mount Vernon and crossing the mountains settled at Grave creek. Here he remained until Ohio was admitted to the Union, when he removed to what is now Noble county. Mr. GRAY was not illiterate; he learned to read and write before entering the Revolutionary army. In disposition he was quiet, kindly and generous; a good Christian, having joined the Methodist church at twenty-five years of age, and was for seventy-eight years a regular attendant.

His means of support was earned by farm labor. When in his old age, poor and infirm, Congress granted him a pension of $500 per annum. The bill providing this was introduced in the House in 1866, by Hon. John A. Bingham. This tardy act of justice to the old hero was the result of efforts in his behalf by Hon. J. M. DALZELL, whose kindly interest and generous efforts to make comfortable and peaceful the last years of Mr. GRAY are highly honorable to him.

Mr. DALZELL has published a full and complete account of John GRAY’S career and it is to this work that we are chiefly indebted for the sketch here given.

On the occasion of Mr. DALZELL’S last interview with John GRAY, he asked if he were not growing fatter than when he last saw him. “Oh, no,” laughingly replied Mr. GRAY, “we old men don’t fatten much on hog and hominy and the poor tobacco we get now-a-days.”

Mr. GRAY had used tobacco about a hundred years and knew something of its virtues as a solace, for later in the interview, speaking of deprivations in the past, he said: “I sometimes have had nothing else but a dog,” and musing a moment he added, “a plug of tobacco, of course; for without a dog or tobacco I should feel lost.”

This simple, inoffensive, kind-hearted old hero died of old age, in his one-story, hewed-log house, near Hiramsburg, where he had resided the last forty years or more of his life. His funeral services were held in a grove near his home, with an audience of more than a thousand people present and presided over by several clergymen, the principal speaker being Capt. Hoagland, of the 9^th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, a minister of the Protestant Methodist church.

He was buried some two hundred and fifty yards north of the house in which he lived and died, in a family graveyard containing about thirty of his relatives and family connections. Near his remains lie those of two of his relatives, Samuel Halley and Gillespie David; the first fought under General Harrison at Fort Meigs during the war of 1812, the other died in the war of the Rebellion. Thus the heroes of three wars and of the same family lie side by side.