Sylvester Richmond

My great grandfather was named Sylvester Richmond. He was a soldier in the 138th Indiana, and his name (S. Richmond) is on your Three Creeks Civil War monument as being a resident of West Creek Township. He also had two brothers in the war, Joshua Richmond (J. Richmond) and David Richmond (D. Richmond), of the 20th Indiana. They are listed as being from Cedar Creek Township.

I can flesh out the story a little. The Richmond family came from Canada, the northeast shore of Lake Ontario. The family had left the U.S. after the Revolutionary War because they were Quakers and Loyalists. Two generations later, those standards no longer mattered, and Sylvester’s parents, David and Eleanor Richmond, left Canada sometime before 1850 and moved to Ashtabula, Ohio. Two of David’s sisters, Phebe Richmond and her husband Jonah Thorn, and Sarah Richmond and her husband Elijah Brundage, also left and moved to Ashtabula, and then moved on to Lake County, Indiana. I have found the Brundage family in the 1850 census along with the Thorn family in Centre Township. The Richmonds were still in Ashtabula in 1850.

At some point, and I don’t know when, the Richmonds left Ashtabula. They apparently headed to Indiana, perhaps to join up with David’s sisters in Lake County, but I can find no trace of them in the 1860 census anywhere. In May 1861, Joshua enlisted in the 12th Indiana Infantry for a one year tour. He was probably about 16, but his age is listed as 18. He is listed as Webster J. (for Joshua) Richmond. He enlisted in Grant County, so that may be where the Richmonds were living, but I can’t find them there.

Two months after Joshua enlisted in the 12th, brother David Richmond enlisted in Company B, 20th Indiana, for a 3 year tour. He enlisted from Lake County, so at this point he at least was a resident.

After Joshua’s one year enlistment with the 12th was finished, he came back to Indiana and immediately reenlisted, this time in the 20th Indiana, B Company, and joined his brother David. I have copies of Joshua’s muster roll, and he was excused for special duty with an ambulance corps for a few months in the fall of 1862. Unfortunately he was with the 20th when they were in Gettysburg the following summer, because he was killed. He is one of the “lucky” soldiers to have his own grave and gravestone at the Gettysburg Cemetery, possibly because his brother was there to identify him.

David Richmond soldiered on another year until the Battle of the Wilderness, where he was wounded; he mustered out when his enlistment was up in July 1864. He came home, moved to Kankakee, Illinois, where he married, moved to Kansas, and became a farmer. He died January 19, 1915 in Little Valley Township, McPherson County, Kansas.

Sylvester Richmond, the oldest brother, did not enlist until May 1864 in the 138th Indiana. My guess is until then he had people, perhaps his mother, to take care of. The 138th Indiana had a short enlistment, 100 days, and their mission was to guard railroads in Georgia and Tennessee. Sylvester was promoted to Sergeant, First Class, and came home after his hundred days' service. Unlike his brother David, after the war he traveled east, back to Ashtabula, Ohio. In January 1870 he married Ella Wyman there. They had 3 boys who died in infancy, and then my grandmother, Angie Eleanor Richmond, was born in 1882. Sylvester was a carpenter. He suffered a terrible accident in 1885, falling out of a tree while picking apples and falling on his head. His brain injury was so severe that he had to be committed to the county home for the insane, and he died in 1888. The war service became important then because his widow (with a lot of wrangling) obtained a widow’s pension from his service on which she and Angie lived.