I'm guessing that it was mostly students of Civil War history who noted a few days ago the 157th anniversary of the bloody Battle of Shiloh (or Pittsburg Landing), fought on April 6-7, 1862, in southwest Tennessee. It was a battle that claimed the lives of many young Iowans, including 15 from Lucas County. At the turn of the 20th century, however, when veterans of that great war still were men of influence across the state, the anniversary was widely observed. On Saturday, April 6, 1909, for example, more than 30 survivors of Shiloh and many others gathered at the courthouse in Chariton for a 45th-year anniversary observance sponsored by the Clarke and Lucas County Shiloh Veterans Association.
Programs in the courtroom, speeches, solemn memorials --- and noontime and evening banquets --- were on the program, hosted by members of Chariton's Daniel Iseminger Post No. 18, Grand Army of the Republic.
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Iseminger had been a name to be conjured with in Chariton since 1855 when Daniel, his wife, Susan, and their young son, George, arrived from Indiana to open a general merchandise store on the square. Daniel was elected Chariton's first mayor when the young city, founded during the fall of 1849, finally was incorporated during the spring of 1857.
A veteran of the Mexican War, Daniel, nearly 50 when President Lincoln's first call for volunteers was issued, was among the first to offer his services --- on May 3, 1861; and with Chariton attorney Warren S. Dungan and others set about recruiting what would become Co. B, 6th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, in large part among the young men of Lucas and Clarke counties.
Elected captain, Iseminger led his company of some 85 men to Burlington during July of 1861 where they were mustered into federal service; and Daniel was in command of those same men a few months later at Shiloh. As other officers in the 6th Iowa fell around him that bloody day, eventually he was left as the last man standing and in command of the entire regiment. He fell soon after himself in a hail of bullets.
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In the months after her husband's death, Susan Iseminger sold the family business in Chariton and moved to Indiana, where son George was attending what now is Indiana University Bloomington. After he received his law degree, they settled in Bedford, Indiana, where the remainder of their lives were spent.
When Chariton's Civil War veterans organize a post of the Grand Army of the Republic a few years after the war, they honored Daniel's memory by naming it after him.
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Three days after than 1909 Shiloh anniversary observance in Chariton, S.B. Swift received in the mail a copy of the Bedford, Indiana, Democrat, that contained a notice of Susan Iseminger's death in Bedford at the age of 91 as his former comrades had been assembling in Chariton for their reunion --- on April 6, 1909, the 45th anniversary of her husband's death. Here's her obituary from the Democrat of April 6, as published in The Chariton Herald of April 11:
"Mrs. Susan R. Iseminger, 91 years of age, mother of George O. Iseminger, 19th street, with whom she made her home, died this morning at 7:30. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage during the night and this morning a light stroke of paralysis, after which she sank into a peaceful sleep, from which she never awoke. She had been feeble for some time, but did not take permanently to her bed until a few days ago.
"The funeral will take place from the First Christian church, of which she had for many years been a member, Sunday afternoon at 2 o'clock. The burial will be at Green Hill.
"Mrs. Iseminger was the oldest and last surviving of a family of nine children, and is survived only by the one son with whom she lived.
"It is a remarkable coincidence that her husband, Capt. Daniel Iseminger, died forty-five years ago today, being killed by a Confederate bullet while in command of the 6th Iowa regment at Shiloh, the superior officers either being killed or disabled. The regiment was finally left without a commanding officer and was forced to drop back.
"Mrs. Iseminger was in every way a most estimable woman."
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Susan's grave is well marked in Bedford's Green Hill Cemetery (above), located near the grave of her son, George, and other members of his family. She also was survived by a daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
Daniel's remains were gathered from the battlefield after the war and reinterred in the national cemetery at what now is Shiloh Military Park. They were unidentifiable, however, and so he rests among the "unknowns."
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