For the past six years, the East Liberty Memorial Day Celebration hasn’t been complete without the recognition of a hometown hero, a local figure that helped shape American history through their military service. This year, the seventh annual honoree will be William Humphreys, a Civil War veteran.
Humphreys’ legacy will be recognized during the East Liberty Memorial Day ceremony at 10 a.m. Monday at the East Liberty Cemetery. Previously, this award has highlighted a variety of local military heroes, including Clara Goldsmith, a U.S Army Nurse during World War I; a personal secretary to General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing during World War I; a survivor of the Bataan Death March; and a corporal who served in World War II’s Battle of the Bulge.
East Liberty resident Jeff Hall and his son, attorney Tyler Hall have researched the life of William Humphreys, a Logan County local born in 1842. They found that he was the third of his family to join the Union, after his father, Jacob, and older brother, Daniel, enlisted in the 17th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in September 1861. Jacob was age 56 at the time and served as a first lieutenant, and Daniel as a private.
Shortly after, Jacob died of illness in December 1861 at camp in Somerset, Ky., and is buried at the North Greenfield Cemetery just north of East Liberty. Daniel survived the war, earning a promotion to sergeant. He died many years later in 1923 and is buried in East Liberty Cemetery.
William also had a younger brother, Francis, who still has descendants that live in East Liberty today, including his great-granddaughter Linda Baldridge.
William Humphreys enlisted in the 45th Ohio Volunteer Infantry on Aug. 8, 1962, and after a brief illness, recovered in time to defend Knoxville against the Rebels’ advance in the autumn of 1863. That October, the Battle of Philadelphia took place – an extremely difficult battle where Union forces lost significant numbers of soldiers, as well as materials such as artillery, ammunition, wagons, and other supplies.
William was one of 447 men captured by the southerners at the Battle of Philadelphia, and from there he was taken first to Richmond, where he survived a harsh winter, then to Fort Sumpter, in Andersonville, Ga., in the February of 1864.
The Confederate prison in Andersonville, where Humphreys was taken, has been noted in history for its harshness – food and medical supplies were scarce, water was extremely unclean, and the space meant to house 10,000 Yankee prisoners housed more than three times that amount in the August of 1864.
The father and son pair’s research uncovered a letter that William wrote to his mother on April 29, 1864, asking her to send desperately needed provisions:
Dear Mother,
I am alive yet and I think that I will be able to worey it through the storm yet if nothing turns up I don’t want you to fret about me fore I will do the best I know how. I have wrote one letter home but have received no answer yet and I told you to send me a box of provision.
I want you to write as soon as you get this from your Son, William Humphreys to Parmelia Humphreys East Liberty Logan Co Ohio. Direct to Camp Sumpter Anderson, Georgea 45. Regt. Co. C. OVMI.
Send me a Box of provisions such stuff as won’t spoil. Apple butter, a can of pickles, and salt & pepper and dried sausage and anything that won’t spoil Send a case [with a] knife, plate, fork, and spoon, cheese sugar, tea, and coffee, dried beef. Anything that you think won’t spoil.
Couple bars of soap and towel and shirt, paper and envelops. So goodbye from your Son.
W. Humphreys
He added a P.S. also asking for “some nice soup beans”
Whether he received his longed-for package is not known. Two months later, our hometown hero fell ill with pleuritis in the misery of Andersonville and died at the age of 22 on June 19, 1864.
Tyler Hall writes about the life of William Humphreys, stating that the Civil War and the accounts from Andersonville are a few pages from one of the darkest chapters of America’s history: “This frightful era was a time where our country was genuinely aflame; sparked by notions of equality of men and governments but fueled by political animus and death.”
He hopes that through looking at the darker moments from our country’s past, people are able to see how much America has grown, and will continue to grow, since the time of William Humphrey and the Civil War.
“America is not finished. And the path that leads us forward was paved with the sacrifice of those like William Humphrey and all of our Hometown Heroes,” he said.