Volunteer Guide and Re-Enactor at Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield - Philip Whiteman - dressed in Union soldier typical uniform. This story is one of great sacrifice for our country and a mistake that took 150 years to come to light.
My great-great-great grandfather's name was Levi Griffin. He born in 1828 probably in Ohio (although Census records say Indiana). In October of 1849, Levi married a local girl named Rebecca Nutt and settled in Madison Township, Fayette County, Ohio to farm and raise his family. They lived in a close-knit community among their extended family. Mount Sterling was nearest town.
For almost 12 years, Levi and Rebecca lived their lives raising four of their five children - facing the heart-break of losing a 1-year-old daughter. Money was scarce and life was not easy in 1850's rural Ohio. They worked hard and long to get by in those days.
The dawn of the new decade of 1860 brought rumors of war and their little community in Ohio was not immune. In 1861,the Civil War errupted. Ohio was an important state in the Union war effort. Men recruiting for the Union army arrived in nearby Mount Sterling on a hot August day in 1862. The young farmers and men of the area gathered to hear the recruiters rousing speeches, calling for young able-bodied American men to answer the call to arms to put down the treasonous secession and keep the Union whole. Nearly 60% of Ohio's men answered the call - by percentage more than any other state.
Levi was 33 years old. Not young but not too old to answer the call. And probably even more importantly, there was a $100 bounty of which $25 would be paid up front for a 3-year enlistment. For a farmer in rural Ohio it was a lot of money. However, it probably did not occur to those farmers of the horrors they would endure in battle or that they would probably not return to their families at all.
Within a few months of that August afternoon, Levi left his wife and four children and would gather with the other men of his community at Camp Chase, Ohio. They would be organized with other Ohio men into the 113th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Levi served in Company G with other men - friends and family - from his county. They formed a part of the Army of the Cumberland under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman.
The reality of a soldier's life would soon hit Levi as summer turned to fall and then to winter. There wasn't enough food, blankets, shelter, coats or shoes to go around. Levi and his comrades marched endlessly in all weather conditions. Marching punctuated by intense periods of battle for ill-prepared and inexperienced farmers. They suffered and endured - losing as many men to disease as to battle. Their first major engagement was at Chicamauga and they lost nearly 138 men out of 382 in battle. But Levi survived Chicamauga and other skirmishes and in 1864 marched with his regiment towards Atlanta, Georgia.
On the morning of June 27, 1864, the 113th Ohio was one of the first regiments on the front lines of the assault on the Confederate earth works at what would become known as Cheatham Hill and the dead angle at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia.
It was a suicide mission - charging uphill at the Confederate trenches. A hill that was covered in sharpened sticks and trenches. Levi and the soldiers of the 113th were easy targets as the Confederates picked them off as they tried to charge up the hill
Levi died of a gunshot wound on the side of that hill.
Approximate area where Levi died at Cheatham Hill, Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield, Georgia (May 2010) A memorial to another fallen Ohio soldier is in the foreground.
