Newspaper Article

Web Author's Notes:

This article recounts the history of the 16th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, focusing on the extensive travel the regiment experienced during the war as well as casualty statistics.

It is important to note the author used the wrong date for the mustering out of the regiment indicating it was on October 31, 1863. The author goes on to make a point that the regiment traveled very extensively for its ...brief term of service., however, the regiment actually mustered out one year later on October 31, 1864, having fulfilled more than the three year term under which it was organized and for which the majority of Civil War regiments were formed.

The article was published in the Circleville Daily Union-Herald on September 19, 1925, and was contributed by 16th Ohio researcher Rob Garber. The identical article was again published in the Sandusky Register on February 6, 1930.

SHORT STORIES OF THE BUCKEYE STATE

The 16th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

The Sixteenth Volunteer Infantry had a high record of travel during its term of service from its organization at Camp Tiffin near Wooster, October 2, 1861, to the time of its muster out here at Columbus, Oct. 31, 1863, considering the comparatively brief term of its service. It traveled by railroad 1,285 miles; by steam boat, 3,619 miles; by steam ship, 1,200 miles; and on foot, 1,621 miles--total distance moved, 7,725 miles. And it is an indication of the safety of traveling even under the conditions that prevailed with the movement of great bodies of troops in those days, over land and water, that the historian of the regiment sets down the fact that, not only was not a single life lost enroute, but that there was not a single accident that could be attributed to the conditions of travel.

That our warm southern states were then as now subject to an occasional visit of old King Winter from the north, there is the singular notation that on one occasion when the regiment was being transported across the Gulf of Mexico, and while off the coast of Texas in latitude 27, the vessel encountered a norther which did not have its teeth pulled by the warm water of the gulf, and so severe was the cold that several men in the regiment had their feet frozen.

Though the regiment took part in thirteen battles, many of them major engagements, though not all, it lost in battle or by death from wounds but two officers and sixty men. There was one death by suicide and one by accidental shooting. Two men drowned accidentally while bathing.

But there were 185 deaths from disease, 45 of them while the victims were with the regiment, and the rest in general hospital. The number of men who were wounded and recovered was 188, and it is a significant fact that the regiment never had more men ill at one time than when it was still at Camp Dennison barracks in 1861. The troops had not yet learned how to take care of themselves in camp.--J. H. Galbraith in Columbus Dispatch.