Facts: CIVIL WAR PLUS

Facts: CIVIL   WAR PLUS

 NORMAN  V.  KELLY

2-24-1862     CAMP LYON CLOSES  SOURCE OF GREAT RELIEF FOR THE NEIGHBORS…Peoria Heights and of course the troops  they caused a lot of trouble here…some serious and there was no parade in the streets when these troops left and cleaned up the camp  7 of them were in Stockade and many of them had other disciplines…off to war…finally

Camp Peoria still here but was always a much more disciplined camp…

Want to buy a Prairie Schooner  local Wagon Train maker has 14 brand new ones for sale   all ready to head west…

 

August 1862  1,000 strong    86^th infantry  left Peoria today for battle…huge number of people saying good bye.

 

DECEMBER   1862    Les Miserables   HUGE selling book in Peoria   strange for me reading that   2 years ago my Nephew  BART SHATTO STARRED IN THE PLAY   Le Miz   RIGHT HERE IN Peoria…

10-1882  Huge Military Funeral in Peoria   biggest in our history for COL  William Thrush    street after him?  Bodies  of soldiers coming home and there is a lot of funeral and stories about wounded and dead soldiers but then right next to that would be a description of a dance of even going on…Of course that is normal but it just seems strange when you research it here in Peoria.

4-1882  THE HOME GUARD     ‘NEWSPAPER KIDDED THEM’   these men  500 strong are ready to DO OR DIE   AT home…  MADE UP OF OLD MEN MOST OF THEM TOO FAT   OR TOO THIN to join the army   Many of them had enough money to gain exemption or hired a substitute so they did not have to go off and protect their county….Many of them included the flat Foot  cockeye  MISFITS……10-1882   a   PRIVATE JORDAN    A Peoria soldier wrote the newspaper and said he was in TENN  where he is guarding confederate prisoners   many of them were from Peoria and Elmwood…and Knoxville   2 southern belles thumbed their noses at us Northern troops so we threw them in jail.

A HUNTING PARTY STAYING HERE IN Peoria reported that they killed over a thousand ducks over the week-end.

Today    2   Peorians who had lived in  Minnesota returned to town they were attacked by Indians up there and lost everything they had but their two lives  and their BEAR CUB…

MISS SPENCER died   age 50 named a heroine because of he volunteer work as a Nurse  spent a year with the 17^th. Infantry   local folks told reporters that he health was ruined by 15 months of service to the boys in the Army.

Peoria police now receive 500 a YEAR and the captains get 600.    12  62

 

1863   1863

Don’t always believe what historians tell you…because I mentioned how some local papers suspected Ingersoll and hinted at his lies and his army career…here is what another paper said about Our Most Famous Citizen.

Still the GREAT  Ingersoll stood  and fought his enemy hand to hand…until overpowered…he was taken prisoner…Casualties reported to Ingersoll’s regiment:  2 killed 8 injured…62 taken prisoner or missing…Ingersoll was paroled several months later.”  

I really think this was meant to inject humor…because the local newspapers did a lot of this..

Up in the small village of Lawn Ridge 600 hundred men gathered to rid the area of wolves that were killing chickens…with dogs  guns and pitchforks they made a six mile circle determined to kill them all:  Result…  ONE WHITE OWL  ONE RABBIT  ONE QUAIL AND ONE DEER….Oh….by the way  the DEER got away.

As I mentioned life here in Peoria was just simply unwavering during the Civil War…if you did not have a friend or loved one in the WAR…all you did was read about it..I was here during WW 2 and I can tell you it was precisely the same way…big difference was the so-called shortages of everything…later I learned that the shortages were real   UNLESS YOU HAD MONEY…I MAY STILL WRITE A BOOK ABOUT Black Market In Peoria…( If I can finish the other 10 I keep promising to write)

1883   Continued

Music selling in Peoria  especially Organ music  Brave BOYS   and The Vacant Chair..

WHISKEY    46 cents a gallon bought here in Peoria

11-1863

Fewer and Fewer Boats are coming and going in Peoria and I November the last of them leave for the season   Henry Detweiller writes home and occasionally the papers write about his exploits and heroic activities as he carries troops and supplies into dangerous war areas,…

Ladies Society work daily to ship supplies of all kinds to the men at war…they march and rally and raise money…

JANUARY  1862  Big trouble at Camp Peoria   A sentry shot a man he said was trying to sneak out of camp   leg had to be amputate   other soldiers rose up  against the shooter carrying two or three ropes to lynch the man.  He held them off with his bayonet until he was rescued by a captain and his men….Later it was learned that the man they just about lynched was not the man that fired the shot….next morning quite a few men were seen being marched out of the camp..

CONSCRIPTION   ACT 

Lincoln’s Conscription Act effected in 1863 caused a lot of meetings here in town for against and a hundred other opinions   our army was volunteer and now they were drafting men..  I do not know much about the civil war  only what was going on here in Peoria   but I wondered if I gave $1,000  or $300 to a man to substitute for me in 1861…..was I subject to DRAFT  how  do I get my money back   problems  Problems…….