Charles F. Kellogg (aka Charles Dunham), 21st IA Inf.

KELLOGG, DUNHAM, LOOMIS, EATON, TENNERY, SULLIVAN, ORCUTT, MCCONE, WINTERSTEEN

Posted By: Carl Ingwalson (email)
Date: 3/4/2016 at 13:07:04

Written by Carl Ingwalson.
cingwalson@cfilaw.com
__________________________

CHARLES FRAST KELLOGG

There are three published rosters of men who served in Iowa’s 21st Regiment of Volunteer Infantry: Nathaniel B. Baker, Report of the Adjutant General (F. W. Palmer, State Printer, Des Moines, 1863), Volume 1; George Crooke, The Twenty-First Regiment, Iowa Volunteer Infantry (King, Fowle & Co., Milwaukee, 1891); and the Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers (Emory H. English, State Printer, Des Moines, 1910), Volume III.

Charles F. Kellogg served in the regiment, but his name is on none of the rosters. He served under an alias.

A Kellogg family genealogy says Henry Kellogg was born in 1816 and Nancy Loomis in 1820. On January 24, 1836, they were married in New York. Their children were Elias Dunham Kellogg (born March 24, 1837) who was born in Mount Morris, New York, and Luraney Matilda Kellogg (born October 2, 1839), Nancy Henrietta Kellogg (born December 21, 1840) and Charles Frast Kellogg (born January 20, 1843) who were born in Kirtland, Ohio.

Henry was a Universalist clergyman in New York, but moved the family to Ohio where he worked in the drug business and served as Chaplain in the Ohio Senate. After moving to Iowa, Henry built a house and raised garden seeds for sale and the manufacture of “Kellogg’s all-healing salve,” a product that sold well “for it really was all that was claimed for it. It was in every home and was regarded as a necessity.” Henry was also instrumental in the founding of Webster City, Alma and Cresco, was a trustee of the Iowa State Agricultural College, and served in the Assembly.

Luraney had died before the family left Ohio, but the other three children accompanied their parents to Iowa where, in 1857, Henrietta married William Eaton. Four years later, with the commencement of the Civil War, President Lincoln called for volunteers and Elias and Charles answered the call when they enlisted from Kossuth County on August 9, 1861, in Company F of the 2d Iowa Cavalry. Charles’ age was listed as nineteen (which doesn’t correlate with the birth date). On August 23rd, the local women hosted a dinner for the soldiers followed by dancing in the old Irvington town hall. From Davenport, the regiment went down river and occupied quarters in St. Louis’ Benton Barracks.

Henry Kellogg died on January 6, 1862, and was buried in Clinton’s Oakwood Cemetery. Still at Benton Barracks in January, Charles contracted pneumonia. On the 29th he deserted and, he said, went to “my sister’s home in Iowa where I lay sick for nearly two months.” Charles recovered his health, but realized he had been reported as a deserter and this “angered me.”

On August 15, 1862, using his brother’s middle name as his own surname and his sister’s Clinton County address and giving his age as twenty-one, he enlisted in the 21st Iowa Infantry as Charles F. Dunham, the name that appears on the rosters.

In Dubuque, he was mustered into Company C on August 22nd and the regiment on September 9th. On the 16th, they crowded on board the Henry Clay and two barges tied alongside and left for war. Stopping in St. Louis, they spent one night in the same Benton Barracks where Charles had been hospitalized a year earlier. From there they traveled by rail to Rolla and then walked to Houston. That’s where they were when word was received that Confederates under John Marmaduke were advancing on Springfield. A hastily assembled relief force headed in that direction, but met the Confederates in one-day battle at Hartville on January 11, 1863.

Military records indicate Charles was captured on the 11th and, on the 13th, paroled along the North Fork of the White River near the mouth of Arkansas’ Indian Creek. In addition to Charles’ own military records, the official report by General Fitz Henry Warren, although not naming Charles, confirmed that Union prisoners were paroled at that location on the 13th. Charles was sent to Benton Barracks where he arrived on February 15th. Muster Rolls confirm his presence at the barracks as a paroled prisoner through the end of August and that he was exchanged and ordered to his regiment on October 6, 1863.

On the 28th, he reported for duty at Vermilion Bayou in Louisiana. The regiment spent the next four weeks west of the Mississippi, but arrived in Algiers on November 22d and the next day boarded the Corinthian and headed for Texas. On arrival, Charles said he was “detached to raise a company of mounted scouts” and was:

“one of seven men who raided the Rebel lines at Ft Matagorda, Texas, on Jan 4" 1864, and cut out 14 fine horses and brought them safe to camp at the lower end of the Peninsula. This was a night escapade and so cold we nearly froze to death. Six days later I rode through the town of Victoria and [Confederate Colonel James] Duffs camp of Rebel cavalry unchallenged and in broad daylight.”

On February 22, 1864, Charles was in the saddle again, this time with a party of scouts from several regiments who rode out about eight miles from camp. Each had been carefully selected for “known ability as horsemen marksmanship and courage.” Charles was second in command as they neared Green Lake where, about 4:00 p.m., they were surrounded by “well armed and well mounted cavalry of the enemy, 55 strong.” While most escaped, Charles was captured, the only member of the regiment known to have been captured twice.

He and four others from the regiment were taken north through Houston to Tyler, Texas, where they were imprisoned at Camp Ford, a congested camp described as a “sewer pit,” a “hellhole” and a “sty not fit for pigs.” More than four months later their release was negotiated and on July 8, 1864, all five of the men left the camp under guard. They were among a large group of prisoners taken to Shreveport and then down the Red River to a landing where they were returned to Union forces on July 22, 1864. From there they went to Algiers so they could receive better medical care. All five had suffered greatly, met with surgeons and were weighed on the Quartermaster’s scale. Charles weighed 82 pounds, down from 163 pounds at the time of his capture.

He recovered his health sufficiently to accompany the regiment as it performed duty on Arkansas’ White River, at Memphis and at Kennerville in Louisiana where he was detached to serve as an Orderly at General Steele’s headquarters. He rejoined the regiment at the end of January 1865 and was with it during that spring’s campaign in Alabama when they occupied Mobile and camped at Spring Hill. On July 15, 1865, they were mustered out at Baton Rouge. The next morning they boarded the Lady Gay and started north. They went ashore at Cairo, boarded cars of the Illinois Central Railroad and traveled as far as Clinton where, on July 24, 1865, they were discharged from the military. Four months later, on November 18th, Charles’s mother died and was buried with her husband in Oakland Cemetery.

Charles pursued a career in medicine after his discharge, graduated from a medical college in St. Louis in 1866 and, on February 17, 1869, married Sarah Ann Tennery in Chicago. Charles and Sarah had three children: Carrie Louise (born April 21, 1873; died August 28, 1874), Henrietta Julia (born June 6, 1875; died June 11, 1875), and Maud Irene (born April 20, 1878). Maud, married William Sullivan on December 23, 1896, in Davenport and moved to Clinton where William worked in a sash and door factory.

Charles and Sarah divorced and, on April 14, 1885, he married Nellie E. (Orcutt) McCone in Erie, Illinois. She died on April 3, 1900, in Clinton and the following year, on October 20, 1901, fifty-eight-year-old Charles married Arvilla “Villa” Wintersteen in Rock Island, Illinois. Villa was active in civic matters, served in the American Legion Auxiliary Unit of the Legion’s June van Meter Post and was Treasurer of the Ladies of the Grand Army.

Meanwhile, Charles had submitted evidence regarding his identity to the federal government which finally acknowledged his correct name:

NOTATION

WAR DEPARTMENT

Record and Pension Division,

Washington, May 7, 1890

It has this day (May 7, 1890) been determined by this Department from evidence submitted that the correct name of this soldier is Chas. F. Kellogg.

While continuing to practice medicine, Charles was actively involved in numerous professional and civic affairs. The Nathaniel B. Baker Post, Post 88, of the G.A.R. was organized in Clinton in 1882 and Charles served part of the time as the Post Commander and other times as Chaplain of the post. The post often led “picturesque parades leading to Springdale Cemetery.”

In 1887 Charles was the county’s “Physician to the Poor,” in 1894 the federal government appointed him as Pension Examiner (a surgeon who would examine veterans seeking invalid pensions), and in 1902 he was appointed by the Governor as a delegate to the meeting of the American Congress on Tuberculosis held in New York City. In 1903 he served as Secretary of a Board of School Directors, was in his sixth term as Health Officer, was in his fourteenth term as County Physician, and presented the county’s war museum with “a couple of Bounty soldier warrants issued during the time of the late rebellion.” In 1911 he was one of seventy-two active medical practitioners in the county. He also served a lengthy term as the Clinton County Coroner, a position he held at the time of the infamous 1922 murders of Rosela and Homer Brownfield in their store in Low Moor. Charles performed the autopsies and concluded that “Mrs. Brownfield had been most shamefully mistreated, beaten and criminally assaulted while dying.” The murders were never solved.

Charles’ brother, Elias Dunham Kellogg, in addition to his service with the 2d Iowa Cavalry, served in the state’s 32nd Infantry until being mustered out on May 10, 1865. He died in Walla Walla, Washington, on June 22, 1912. No record of a Washington burial was found, but his name is on the same stone as his parents in Oakland Cemetery.

Charles Kellogg died on February 12, 1926, and Villa on February 8, 1942. They’re buried in Springdale Cemetery where a section was set aside for veterans of the Civil War. (see link below for a photo of his gravestone)

Dr. Charles Kellogg Gravestone
 

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