Enlistment Districts
The State was divided by the War Department into two
enlistment districts, the first district including
Olmsted County, and Rochester was made the recruiting
station, with Capt. Charles H. Sec, of Caledonia, as
provost marshal, and Dr. William W. Mayo, of Le Sueur,
as examining surgeon. The office did a large business
for several months in examining those who claimed
exemption from military service by physical disability.
Less than a third of such applicants were exempted from
the draft. There was no actual conscription of recruits
in Olmsted County, though drafts were ordered at least
twice, and the names were drawn for conscription, but
the victims were never called upon for service.
The draft for conscripts took place at the provost
marshal's office at Rochester, March 14, 1864. The names
of persons subject to the draft were placed in a box,
shaken up and drawn, one by one, by J. E. Ells, and
announced by C. C. Cole, deputy marshal. The names of
nine able-bodied men were drawn from: Names are not
complete.
Enlistment Districts
Dover
Elmira
Eyota
Orion
Quincy |
Viola
Cascade
Farmington
Kalmar
New Haven |
Oronoco
Pleasant Grove
Rock Dell
Salem
Rochester City |
Names Associated with Enlistment Districts
Milo White
George Kepney
Peter H. Perry
W. W. Doty
Charles Nye
William E. Buttle
Abraham Pierce
John Atkinson
S. R. Terwilliger
John A. Barker |
John Engle
J. L. Rockwell
Eugene Wooldridge
William F. Toogood
William Pierson
George Baihly
I. P. Brewer
Charles C. Jones
A. M. Blakely |
Pat Woods
George W. Graves
Otto N. Cook
John C. Enke
John H. Hyatt
Charles H. Hitchcock
Moses Tyler
E. Damon
Browning Nichols |
When the name of George Baihly, the well-known Rochester
butcher, was announced he took his fate and prospective
hardship with the greatest good nature, got a box of
cigars and passed them around in the assembled crowd.
There is no reason to believe that the county would have
fallen short of the quota of enlistments required of it,
but the possibility of a draft led to the offering of
bounties by communities, and several of the townships
bonded themselves, some very heavily, to borrow money to
pay bounties to volunteers. One result of the bounty
system was that volunteers, naturally wanting what
bounty they could get, would have themselves credited to
some other township than their own for the sake of
higher bounty; so that the rosters are inaccurate in
showing to what township volunteers be longed.
Olmsted County |Minnesota
AHGP
Source: History of Olmsted
County Minnesota, by Hon. Joseph A. Leonard, Chicago,
Goodspeed Historical Association, 1910.
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