John Nelson (1825-1907), a distant ancestor of my husband, was among the brave "Iron Men" of the Indiana 44th Regiment fighting at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, during the US Civil War. He was a son of John Martin Nelson and Susannah McKibbin. Born in Ohio, as a young man he moved to Indiana with his farming family.
In the fall of 1861, with the Civil War underway, Nelson and many other men from northeast Indiana enlisted with the 44th Indiana. Their letters home helped illuminate the war's toll on these men.
Nelson himself, part of Company H, was badly wounded at Shiloh, a bloody battle won by the Union. Still, he returned to fight as soon as he was able. The 44th Indiana Infantry fought so courageously, in fact, that the state of Indiana later erected a historical marker at Shiloh, Tennessee, in their honor.
Throughout the war, the 44th fought on and on, including at the Battle of Chickamauga, where Nelson was again wounded, according to his Find a Grave memorial page. Company H of the 44th was photographed as shown at top and the regiment was well documented, as you can see on the Wikipedia Commons page here.
Finally mustered out at war's end, Nelson returned home to farm. He filed for an invalid's pension soon after the war. When he died in September of 1907, he was buried with a simple Civil War headstone that noted his rank as private. Remembering John Nelson: farmer, soldier, farmer.
