Deshler Flag, December 28, 1944:
Richard Reese, 98, Went Through Georgia With Sherman
Henry county’s last link the Civil War was broken Monday, with the death of Richard Reese, 98, sole survivor in this county of the great war between the North and the South which took place 80 years ago, and one of they last little handful of survivors in the entire state.
Mr. Reese served in the 27th Regiment of Company C, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Fuller’s Ohio Brigade, Army of the Tennessee, in plainer terms. Mr. Reese was with General Sherman on the famous march through Georgia, which he recalled vividly in an interview with The Flag just before Memorial Day last year. “We destroyed everything we thought the Rebs could use,” he told us then. “There were lots of cotton gin mills down there and we didn’t leave anything standing except high smokestacks. They tell me that you can see them standIng yet in the south — they call ’em Sherman’s monuments!”
Mr. Reese was in the bitter battle at Fort McAlester, Ga., but escaped injury. He recalled that the army, often outran its supplies, so that the men had to live for days on what supplies they could garner front the barren country around them, largely unhulled rice, for which he acquired a lifelong distaste. “About a fourth of the army had no shoes, but made up this deficiency from the somewhat unwilling Georgians.
Joined When 16 Years Old
“Dick” Reese left home at the age of 16, in the fall of 1853, to cast his lot with the Union Army. At that time he lived in Licking county not for from the birthplace of the famous general who was to be his commander, and whom he met on several occasions after the war.
There were 60,000 men in Sherman’s army, and they cut a 60-mile swath through the heart of the South on a 300-mile march which ended at Savannah, Ga. Mr. Reese was with the army at Raleigh, N. C. when Lee surrendered, and he participated in the Grand Review held at Washington following the peace, when he recalled that General Sherman stood in the reviewing stand for seven
and a half hours as his tired fighters marched by.
Mr. Reese always had a high regard for the Civil War leader, referring to him as “good old Billy.” He recalled receiving a warm handshake from the general when they met in a Newark hotel years after the war, and when Mr. Reese told what regiment he had served with, he treasured Sherman’s reply: “a very fine organization, sir.”
Early Bartlow Settler
When peace came, Mr. Reese took a job driving a “bus”, powered by two mules, between Columbus and Granville. He moved to Bartlow township over sixty years ago, at a time when there was only one house between his home, about five tiles west of here, and Deshler. He first operated a saw mill in the days when that was a thriving industry in this locality, as the forests were being cleared, and later went to farming at the same home where be quietly passed away.
The aged veteran remained remarkably spry up until the past year or so. Until that time he drove into town himself and saw nothing unusual in his doing so. He had been for the past two weeks.
He is survived by three sons, Harry, at home: Howard, of Detroit; and Burch, of Springfield; a daughter, Mrs. Arthur Lazenby, of near Findlay; a stepson, Charles Johnson, Bowling Green; 17 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren.
Funeral services were held today (Thursday) at 10 a.m. at the Fuller Funeral Home in Leipsic.
