Draft Lists 1864 - Winona County, Minnesota

Hart Township

Date  Name of Draftee                Disposition

June

  9    Jesse Knapp                        Deformity of right 
                                                    foot

  "    Guhrman Amunsen              Feeble Constitution

 13   Labora Knauf Hanssan*      Paid Commutation 
                                                    $300

  "    John C. Brandt                     Frozen feet and 
                                                    Ulcerated Legs

  "    David Sherburner                Paid Commutation 
                                                    $300

  "    Patrick Hennesy                      "            "             
                                                    $300

 15  Everhard Hawkins               Loss of teeth

 17  Thomas Dahmer                  Alien

 18  John Steinbauer                   Disease of Lungs

  "    J.F. Tainter                          Paid Commutation 
                                                    $300

 20  Sherman Cady                     Duty

  *  "Liborius Kauphusman" is the correct spelling of this German immigrant's name; draft lists are replete with misspelled names, especially those of immigrants whose names were unfamiliar to those compiling draft lists. The compilers were largely third and fourth generation Americans who traced their ancestry back to the English-speaking British Isles, and had difficulty with the pronunciation and spelling of names of immigrants from Scandinavia, Germany, and Eastern Europe.


-----------------------------------------------------

New Hartford and Dresbach Townships

Date Name of Draftee             Disposition

June

  9     J.R. Clow                          Blind of right eye  

 17    Matthias Nagle                 Paid Commutation

                                                   $300

  "     John Johnson                     Paid Commutation

                                                   $300

  "     George Cordes                   Paid Commutation

                                                   $300

 18   Benjamin Moore                Loss of teeth

  "    G.W. Werden                     Feeble Constitution

  "    Joseph Vail                         Held to Duty

  "    Peter Lambert                     Held to Duty

-----------------------------------

Richmond Township

Date Name of Draftee              Disposition

June

  7     James Hallagan                  Feeble Constitution

         James Clogher                   Deserter

         Albian O. Grass                 Deserter   

                                                    Reported July 12/64

--------------------

Rollingstone Township

Date  Name of Draftee                        Disposition

June

 13      Michael Yechen                          Paid Commutation $300

 14      Enos H. King                               Asthma

 17      Jacob Lader                                 Deafness

 18      George Moore                             Asthma

           Peter Switzer                              Deserter.  Reported Aug. 16,    

                                                              1864

---------------------------

Utica Township

Date  Name of Draftee                         Disposition

June

  9      G. Shott                                         Hernia

 13     John M. Boyd                               Paid Commutation $300

 14     Charles A. Wheeler                      Disease of Lungs

 15     Wm. H. Sanders                           Paid Commutation $300

   "     Jonathan Lewis                                "               "           $300

 18    Thomas Ringle                              Injury of Schull[sic] fracture

         J.H. Perry                                       Furnished Substitute

         Michael Discroll                            Loss of fore finger on right    

                                                                hand

 20    Bradford Babcock                          Disease of heart

         E.D. Comes                                   Deserter

         F. Tomburg                                         "

         J.A. Stout*                                            "

         Samuel Reid                                       "

         Morris M. Small*                                "

*  Both J.A. Stout and Morris M. Small were serving in the Army at the time of this draft and were not deserters. Draft lists were often incorrect, listing men who did not report for the draft as deserters when, in fact, the men did not report because they were already serving in the Army. Great caution should be taken in using these Civil War draft lists as the only source for an individual's lack of service in the military.

----------------------

June  Clinton Doolittle                       Hernia

 24

July 

 1      William Chuerin                        Feeble Constitution

         Peter Kinsey                               Paid Commutation $300

         Coredun Nye*                              Deserter  Reported July 18/64

------------------------

3d Draft July 8/64

July   Ernst Rebstock                          Paid Commutation $300

  18

          Napolean Hagan (2nd Draft)    Acute Opthalimia

          Gebhard Richardson                 In the U.S. Army

-----------------------

4th Draft July 24/64

Aug   Jesse Hany                                 Loss of teeth

 9

          George W. Bidwell                   Deserter

          Nicholas Bouhs**                            "

* NOTE: the first name of the draftee listed above as "Coredun" Nye is also spelled as "Coroden" Nye in the 1880 U.S. Census for Utica Township, Winona County, Minn. -- Jan. 28, 2010

** This draftee's correct name is believed to be "Nicholas Bowers."

------------------------

Utica Township - 1865 Draft Lists

B.F. Kelly             [Age] 28                            April 19, 1865  Released

Henry Cheatham   [Age] 20                                  "                      "

Amos Shattuck      [Age] 33                                 "                      "

Peter Lewis           [Age] 20

Ernest Shane         [Age] 27                           April 14  Deformed left   

                                                                       leg from fracture

Wm Schrew                    27                           April 14 Physical    

                                                                       disability

James Frogata*      [Age] 30                          April 10 Alien

Peter Ramer              41                                 April 19  Released

August Vergrod        33                                       "             "

Leonard Blanchard   26                                       "             "

Casper Rouch           28                                       "             "

John Daily**            36                                       "             "

E.M. Watrous           34                                       "             "

R.K. Holder              39                                       "             "

Joachim Kramer       31                                       "             "

James Taylor            33                                       "             "

T.C. Smith               25                                  April 14  Disease of the 

                                                                       heart

Martin Baldwin        21                                 April 19  Released

James Francis           20                                      "              "

Gabriel Posz             39                                      "              "

J.H. Firth                  30                                      "              "

H. Goresse               36                                       "              "

F.W. Temple           27                                  April 8 Furnished an        

                                                                       associate recruit 

John B. Wood          20                                 April 19  Released

C.H. Watrous           32                                       "              "

Charles Fritz            26                                       "              "

James B. Sebbins***  35                                   "               "

Fred Frestatt             20                                      "               "

Albert Suher             27                                      "               "

N.P. Lovejoy            34                                      "               "

Charles H. Ramer     32                                      "               "

James Ostoway         32                                      "               "

D.H. Wilson             33                                April 8 Furnished an

                                                                     associate recruit under

                                                                     Section 2

George Roberts        30                                April 19  Released

Ernest Rebstock       30                                     "               "

John Fritz                 31                                April 14 Loss of sight of

                                                                     of right eye

H.F. Cordell             36                                April 19  Released

Christian Kramer     35                                      "                "

Charles Grulursen    30                                      "                "

William Milchen     32                                      "                "

Edw Yates               32                                April 19  Released

Wm. A. Cherry        25                                      "                "

Jonah Peterman       35                                      "                "

Pat B. Moore           28                                      "                "

Coridon Nye            37                                      "                "

Myer Lcule              22                                      "                "

Benj Peabody          33                                      "                 "

David Whetstone    42                                      "                 "

*NOTE: The correct name of this man, listed as James Frogata, is believed to be "James Fogarty"

** The correct name of this man, listed as John Daily, is "John Daly."

*** The correct name of this man, listed as James B. Sebbins, is believed to be "James B. Stebbins."


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Fremont Township

Date Name of Draftee                 Disposition

June

  15   John A. Kidney                     Feeble Constitution

  20   John G. Ellis                         Duty

Nov.

3,1863

        Orin Wheeler                         Non-Residence

        John D. Clyde                        Excessive Curvature Spine

        Sherman Cady                        In the U.S. Service

        Harlow Sennes                       Chronic Rheumatism

        Charles Larson                       Extensive Skin Disease

        Edward Brown                       Over Age

        William VanKerouw             Permanent Physical Disability

        John McPhail                         Hernia Left Side

        George Brown                        Duty

        Henry Williams                      Duty

        Donald Ferguson                    furnished Substitute

                                                       W. Degroot

Deserters

       1 Agle Guttuson

       2 Paul Knouf*

       3 Matthew Ferguson

  * NOTE: "Paul Knouf," listed as a deserter in the list above is actually "Paul Knauf" and was serving in the Union Army at the time of this time. This erroneous listing of Paul Knauf as a deserter illustrates the caution that must be used with official draft records, and the need to try to corroborate through other records any lists showing a man as a "deserter."   

Dec.                                  Age
 2      Hiram Howard         26             Deserter
         John Gordon            29             Deserter
         Daniel Willford       42             In the U.S. Service
         Wm. L. Page           39              Deserter
         Alexander Hany      22              Deserter
         Robert Henry          24              Furnished Substitute
                                                           B.L. Hendte [sic]

  

             

                    

There Is a Story Behind Every Name On a Draft List

  Through this blog, I hope to tell the story of the draft in the Northern states during the bloody Civil War that tore the U.S. apart during the years 1861-1865. Conscription - forced military service - was relatively unknown in America. During the Revolutionary War, individual states did, from time to time, order levies of men to fill the ranks. But the country had never had a national draft law until the Civil War.

  The Civil War draft in the North is many stories. The first story are the thousands of men drafted into the Union army. Behind each name on a draft list there is a tale - wives weeping as their husband marches off, fearful parents trying to hold back tears as a son shoulders his musket and walks away, crying children as Daddy waves goodbye one last time.

  These were the men of "Father Abraham's Army." Through this blog, I hope to eventually publish the name of every man - and there were thousands of men - drafted into the Union army.

  There are stories, too, behind the hundreds of men appointed as provost marshals to enforce the draft, and the dozens of doctors hired to examine drafted men claiming they were unfit to serve.

  Then there are the draft-dodgers and the bounty-jumpers. As many as one-fifth of the men drafted ended up dodging military service, according to estimates by draft authorities. For those living in Northern states that bordered Canada - states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and the New England states - slipping across the border was an easy way to avoid military service.

  The naturalist John Muir won fame in the 1880s with his "walks across America." But Muir's first walk was in 1864 when he trekked from the family farm in Wisconsin to Canada and spent the war there, not too far from the city of Detroit, writing home to see if his name had been drawn in the county draft back home.

  Draft-dodgers were called "skedaddlers." In far southern Nova Scotia, just north of the province's border with the state of Maine, draft-dodgers from Maine established a community on a strip of high ground that quickly took on the name "Skedaddle Ridge."

  Others fled to the West, a vast region west of the Mississippi made up of a few states like California, half a dozen Territories, like Nevada, and boundless plains and mountains where settlers did not ask questions of strangers.

  Some drafted men just took to the woods near their farms and homes. In states in what we now call the Midwest but known in the Civil War era as the Old Northwest, deserter camps sprang up in isolated areas where settlers were few and the woods thick. Local sheriffs knew of these camps, but looked the other way - that was the job of federal provost marshals, they reasoned.

  All of these men - drafted soldiers, federal marshals, runaway draftees - have stories to tell, and through this blog, those stories find a voice.     

Two years after the Civil War erupted, President Abraham Lincoln was running out of soldiers. The exhuberant rush of volunteers after the South fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861 was gone. Bloody battles like Bull Run and Antietam decimated the Union Army and left battlefields looking like slaughter houses. Back home, newspapers published the list of dead and wounded - lists that ran page after horrifying page.

The North, boastfully predicting when the war broke out that the Union would whip the South in three months, now realized the awful truth: no one knew how long the war could last.

President Lincoln was desperate. Never in the history of the young country had the government implemented a national draft. It was European princes who forced citizens to serve in armies, not the free democratic republic of the United States of America.

But Lincoln and his top advisors realized that for the Union was to survive, a national conscription law - hated though it would be - was necessary. In March 1863, Congress passed a draft law and in June, three months later, communities all across the North started drafting men for the Union army. The names of all men between the age of 20 and 45 went into a box and draft quotas based on population set for each city, village and township.

If your name was drawn, you were drafted. There were exceptions: the names of men 20 to 35 were drawn first, then the names of married men over 35. Disabled men or men with ailments making them unfit for military duty could win exemption if an Army doctor concurred.

And men with money could buy their way out of serving by paying the government $300 or hiring a substitute to take their place in the Union ranks.

The draft proved to be a horrible system. Men faked ailments to avoid service or bribed doctors to write letters saying they were unfit. Many draftees ran to the woods when a draft officer came into rural neighborhoods. Others fled to Canada or emigrated to the West where settlers on the frontier asked few questions of newcomers.

But in the end, the draft worked. Many cities offered large bounties to volunteers as a way to meet draft quotas, either paying the bounties out of public coffers or through "dues" assessed private draft organizations.

In the first draft call in June 1863, President Lincoln asked for 300,000 men. A popular song of the day echoed that call: "We are coming Father Abraham/300,000 more," the song went.

The draft itself produced few soldiers for the Union armies of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant - only two percent of the army were draftees. But prodded by the threat of a draft, over one million men went into the military, according to Eugene C. Murdock, the country's top historian on the draft.

Draft lists were nailed to the doors of courthouses, post offices and other public buildings all across the North. When new lists went up, men jostled one another to read the names. Men yelled elatedly at a list without their name; others cursed in dejection as their named stared out at them.

Behind every name on a draft list, there is a story.