The Reason Huston Family and their Civil War Service

In his family records, James Stapleton Lewis made a reference I found intriguing.  It began an interesting research journey.  He listed himself as granduncle to three men: James, John, and William Hughston.  He recorded that the three died in 1864 and on two wrote "in the war."  Also listed is Rezin Hughston; JSL said he was an uncle-in-law to Rezin and noted that Rezin was "of Ohio" and died in 1866. 

That's all the information I had to start.  It was obvious that the war referred to had to be the Civil War.  The history buff in me had to find out more.  After a bit of internet digging, here is the JSL connection I found.  JSL's oldest sister was Sarah Lewis who married John Hale.  Their second child was Rhoda Hale, born in 1818 in Sugar Creek Township, Greene County, Ohio.  Though she was JSL's niece, she was only 4 years younger than he was.  I'm sure they knew each other as children.

Rhoda married Reason Huston in Greene County, Ohio in January, 1837.  In 1850 the family appears in the census for Whitley County, Indiana.  Whitley County is just west of the Fort Wayne, Indiana area.  I have found record of the births of 12 children to Reason and Rhoda from 1838 to 1859: John, Martha, Margaret, William Riley, James, Zimri, unnamed male child who lived about a year, Silas B., Sarah/Sadie, unnamed male child who died as an infant, Rhoda, and Nancy.

More men of military age percentage wise served from Indiana in the Civil War than from any other state except Delaware.  More than 24,000 Hoosiers gave their lives to preserve the Union according to an Indianapolis website on Indiana War Memorials.  Three members of the Huston family were among the 24,000 who died.

Civil War Memorial in Columbia City,
 Whitley County, Indiana

John Huston was born in 1838 in Ohio.  He was part of the 5th Indiana Battery Light Artillery which mustered November 22, 1861.  He enlisted as a private.  This unit saw duty in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, then back to Tennessee, and Kentucky.  They engaged in the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky (just west of Danville) on October 8, 1862.  Then they left for Nashville, Tennessee on October 20.  John died at Danville, Kentucky November 28, 1862 (one source says November 1).  He is buried in the Danville National Cemetery in section 40, site 45.  Information on the cemetery states that most of the original interments were Union soldiers who died at the Danville hospital.  My presumption is that John was wounded in the Battle of Perryville or became ill before the unit left for Tennessee and was left in the hospital for care.  This battery as a whole lost one officer and 11 enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 24 enlisted men by disease.

William Riley was born in 1843, and James was born in 1845, both in Indiana.  Both enlisted in Company B, 74th Regiment of Indiana Infantry.  This unit mustered at Fort Wayne, Indiana August 21, 1862.  They headed for Kentucky and were also part of the Battle of Perryville on October 8, 1862.  The unit then marched to Tennessee.  William Riley died November 7, 1862 in Bowling Green, Kentucky which is southwest of Perryville and a little north of the Tennessee border.  He held the rank of corporal.  Presumably his death occurred during the march from Perryville to Gallatin, Tennessee.  He had only enlisted 3 months earlier.  I don't know where he is buried.  Within one month, Reason and Rhoda lost two sons in the service of their country.

James Huston continued in his service as a private in the 74th Regiment Infantry which engaged in various operatons in Tennessee during most of 1863 including the Seige of Chattanooga.  By February 1864 the unit was in Georgia where it was involved in several campaigns.  Sometime James was taken prisoner and was sent to the infamous Andersonville Prison in Georgia. This prison was in existence for 14 months during which it held 45,000 prisoners.  The most it held at one time was 32,000 prisoners.  Nearly 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, and exposure to the elements.  James was one of these deaths; he died there as a prisoner of war from dysentery on June 23, 1864 (though the monument in his hometown lists his death as August 1862.)  He is buried in site 2379 of the Andersonville National Cemetery.  The 74th Regiment lost 274 men. Reason and Rhoda lost a third son in the war.

Silas Huston was born about 1850, yet he also saw service in the Civil War.  He enlisted on Jan 1, 1862 as a musician in Company D of the 59th Indiana Infantry.  This unit saw action in Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Virginia.  I suspect that Silas lied about his age in order to enlist as the wave of patriotism swept through Indiana.  He alone of the four brothers survived his Civil War service.  If he served the entire time with this unit, he mustered out July 17, 1865.  He appears in the 1870 census in Whitley County, Indiana with his mother.  Then August 27, 1873 he reenlisted into the US Army in Chicago.  He served in Company A of the 4th Infantry.  He was mustered out August 27, 1878 from Fort Steele, Wyoming territory.  Fort Fred Steele was located near Rawlins, Wyoming, and was established to protect railroad laborers.  At the time of his discharge Silas was a private, and his character was listed as "excellent."  I haven't yet found Silas after his discharge from the army.

There isn't much left of Fort Steele except an Interstate rest area.

What about the rest of the Huston family?  Two sons had died as infants in 1849 and 1855.  In the middle of the Civil War the family experienced another death when young Nancy died on September 4, 1863.  Reason died shortly after the Civil War ended in 1866.  My heart breaks for Rhoda who lost a husband, three sons, and a daughter within 4 years.  She was a widow at age 48 with children to support.

Daughter Martha married Charles Schuh on January 1, 1867.  Margaret married Joseph McHenry Carver on December 27, 1865.  Son Zimri never married and was still living with his mother Rhoda in the 1880 Whitley County census.  He died in 1895 at age 48.  Sarah/Sadie married Benjamin Franklin Prugh on September 4, 1872.  Daughter Rhoda married Lewis Cornelius on February 25, 1875.  Rhoda Huston lived to the age of 83 and died on May 8, 1903.  Many family members are buried in the South Whitley Cemetery, South Whitley, Whitley County, Indiana.

As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, it is good to remember the sacrifice of families such as the Reason and Rhoda Hale Huston family.  The names of James, John, and William Riley are noted on the large Whitley County Civil War monument in front of the county building in Columbia City, Indiana.  I had the opportunity to visit both the monument and the cemetery last month.  No wonder that James Stapleton Lewis thought enough about their sacrifice to mention them in his genealogical records.

Greene and Clinton Counties, Ohio Results

In August, 2011, I had the long-anticipated opportunity of visiting the land of James Stapleton Lewis' birth near Bellbrook, Sugar Creek Township, Greene Co., Ohio.  Bellbrook is a lovely little town built on hills near the Little Miami River valley.  The highway ran past the Bellbrook Cemetery so I made a stop there.  Though I knew there were family members buried there, I didn't have time to search for graves.  I did take a photo of the cemetery and of the area around the town which I'll post. 

The area surrounding Bellbrook, Greene County, Ohio

The reason I didn't stop in Bellbrook was to allow time to visit the Clinton County Genealogy Society library in Wilmington, Ohio.  The people there were so kind and helpful - though they laughed when I said I was looking for a John Jones.  All genealogists know the difficulties in searching for ancestors with common names.

In all the land records I searched in that library (and in two other large libraries in the region), I could not find any record of Joel Lewis (JSL's father) owning land in the Greene County area.  This surprised me.  Arthur Kennedy Love's work from the 1930s states:  "When Joel Lewis settled in Greene County Ohio, in 1808, the only record discovered of real estate owned by him in the Recorder's Office, is the sale of a lot which he had purchased in Bellbrook.  This lot was deeded to Isaac Fallis in 1836.  Isaac Fallis was the father of Mercy Vaughn Fallis, who married Joel's son Joel.  Whether Joel built a cabin and lived on this lot, or whether he lived else-where in Sugar Creek township, is not known.  However it is known that he was a resident either in the township or the town from 1808 to 1819 or 1820, when he moved to Ward township, Randolph County, Indiana."  I did find reference to land ownership in Randolph County (though it is possible it is a record of Joel Lewis Jr's land) but no record of the transaction Arthur Love noted.

I found records of the land owned in Ohio by Joel's brothers-in-law, Cyrus Sackett, Abram VanEaton, and Daniel Lewis, Sr. whose families left North Carolina before Joel did.  Presumably Joel and Rachel lived near and farmed with one or more of those relatives when they moved to Greene County.  In his journal JSL wrote, "My father afterward carried the United States mails through this Indiana wilderness country. . "  Could he have been doing that in Ohio as well?

One of the things I hoped to find in Clinton County was a record for the death of Sarah Sumpter Jones, mother of Anna Jones Lewis.  It is believed that she died in Clinton County; it's probably  where Anna's brothers George and John died as well.  However, I wasn't successful.  I did find the death record of a Sarah Jones married to a John Jones of Clinton County, but they were too young to be the correct Jones family.  The kind folks at the Wilmington library told me we are unlikely to find any record for Sarah since death records weren't required in that time period and women then didn't have wills or estates to probate.  That makes cemetery records about the only possible source.  I searched all available cemetery records for the areas in and near Clinton County to no avail.  I wonder if there was a family burial plot which has since disappeared.

JSL referred to his father-in-law as Reverend John Jones and as John Jones esquire.  The Wilmington library staff did shed a little light on that.  The Reverend probably means that he was a Baptist Circuit Rider who traveled to various communities to preach.  The esquire probably means that he practiced law to some extent, though that doesn't mean that he had any formal training in the law.

It was disappointing to not find the missing pieces to these family history puzzles.  However, it was thrilling to visit the places where they lived and worked nearly 200 years ago.