Killed on Independence Day 1863

. . . According to C. E. Charles, an Indiana historian who was fascinated by the great number of Wayne County, Indiana, families who relocated to Dallas County, Iowa, the Marshall brothers and their nephew were young farmers whose families would suffer from their absence.

      Collin Marshall owned a farm west of what is now Dexter. Struggling to get started in cattle-feeding, he nevertheless talked over the war situation with his wife Sallie and decided to enlist. 

      A few months later, she wrote, “I thought I never could bear for Coll to go in the war, but he thought it was his duty.” 

     After training, the 39th was sent to Eastern Iowa where they boarded steamboats and headed south to join the fight.

      Collin became second lieutenant of Company H. The spring of 1863, the Iowans were sent ranging far into northeast Alabama, destroying railroads and anything else useful to the Confederates. 

      “North Alabama is the finest country I have seen in the south, but houses, barns and fences are alike in ashes now. We let them know we were here.”

      They gathered livestock, grain, and other supplies, believing that nothing less than complete defeat of the Confederates would end the war and get them home. While such measures hampered the military, they aroused the civilians who struck back, harassing them anyway they could. 

July 4, 1863, a small force from Company H were camped near Iuka Springs, Mississippi, guarding a corral of cattle destined for the army, when news came of Vicksburg’s surrender. 

      When Collin’s sister Minerva got the bad news, she wrote to relatives in Indiana what happened that Fourth of July: “I must first tell of the death of Coll. He was shot in the afternoon of the 4th. . . while riding out about a mile from camp, by a company of Guerillas, some eight or ten in number, who lay hid, then halloed to surrender and fired a volley at the same time, two balls passing through the breast and one through the neck. His horse was wounded also. He raised his hand for them not to shoot, but they only wanted his life.”

      A coffin was procured from Memphis, according to Minerva. Lieutenant Collin Marshall’s body was embalmed and started home two days later accompanied by his younger brother Bob.

      Ten days later, Bob arrived in Redfield without the coffin of his 37-year-old brother. He got as far as Eddyville, Iowa, eighty miles from home, but there was no freight service from there. Apparently, according to Mr. Charles, steamers couldn’t navigate the Des Moines River north beyond that point in July. Bob had his brother buried there temporarily, then came on alone.

      Their older brother, Pete Marshall, drove a team of horses and a wagon to Eddyville, returning home seven days later with Collin’s casket. He was buried “in Masonic style” on a hill at Wiscotta. A military burial might have been more fitting, but there were not enough soldiers left around Redfield to accomplish that. . . . 

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After the war, local reunion groups of the GAR, or Grand Army of the Republic, built meeting halls. The GAR post in Redfield, Iowa, is named for Collin Marshall, who was killed in the War Between the States on Independence Day, 1863.

The entire story was first aired on Our American Stories in September 2021.

From Chapter 4 in The Immigrant and the Outlaw: Discovering Ancestors: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland.