Oscar Dunbar Allen

ALLEN, ARMSTRONG, FRIDLEY

Posted By: Linda Smith
Date: 1/30/2022 at 17:39:16

Oscar Dunbar Allen
by Colleen Peterson, Madison County Civil War 150 Committee
For St. Charles Cemetery Walk, July, 2013

Oscar Dunbar Allen was born May 13th, 1842 in Shelby County, Ohio to Silas Dunbar Allen and Phoebe D. Fridley. Oscar’s great grandfather Dr. Silas Allen was appointed surgeon of the Connecticut Troops during the American Revolution and was a descendant of Edward Fuller, a passenger of the 1620 Mayflower passage.

Oscar joined the 118th Ohio Volunteer Infantry which mustered in at Cincinnati Ohio in September 1862, being comprised of 908 men. They served in Kentucky until August of 1863 then moved to Eastern Tennessee where they lived for six months on half- and then quarter-rations without sugar or coffee and with corn counted out by the kernel and salt by the grain. In Kentucky and Tennessee, the 118th faced Confederate General John Hunt Morgan over and over again.

Letters were the only means of communications with those at home and Oscar wrote many of them which have been carefully preserved. In a letter dated March 22nd, 1863 and postmarked from Kenton County, Kentucky he wrote:
Dear Cousin; I believe the news is that Old Morgan says that he will have Lexington before Friday night and eat his supper there, but I think that he will have some work to do. If he gets his supper, it will be of lead. Yesterday there was a train of soldiers went up and last night there was a battery went up. There is going to be sum hard fightin done in Kentucky before this war is closed.

In another letter from Benton Station, Kentucky, dated July 26th, 1863 (which was 2 years before the war’s end) Oscar wrote:
Dear Cousin Hetty: I guess I would like to come home if I could and I expect that I would have been home now if it had not been for the Morgan raid in Ohio that stopped the furlough business but I think that it done some of the Butternuts some good don’t you think so? I saw two boat loads of old John’s men. They was anchored in the middle of the river. The Rebs is a gittin a general flogging now everywhere. I think that this Rebellion will soon be scratched out.
The 118th went on to serve in the Atlanta campaign, then fell back into Tennessee and pursued Hood into Alabama before mustering out in June of 1865 with only 530 men of the original 908 still remaining.

After the war, Oscar returned to Ohio and married Elizabeth Ann Armstrong on February 22, 1866 in Clinton, Ohio. Oscar and Elizabeth moved with Elizabeth’s father John W. Armstrong and the rest of her family to Madison County and settled in St. Charles. Oscar became a blacksmith with his brother-in-law John C. Armstrong and the couple would have nine children.

Elizabeth would depart this life on January 17, 1884 and Oscar would follow her on December 27, 1884.

Oscar and Elizabeth Allen
 

Madison Biographies maintained by Linda Griffith Smith.
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