Evarts S. Ewing, Major (1892)

EWING

Posted By: Pat Hochstetler
Date: 1/13/2008 at 15:39:19

The Madisonian
Winterset, Iowa
Friday, June 10, 1892
Page 2, Column 2

County and City

Major Everetts Ewing, a retired officer of the regular army, died last Tuesday morning at the home of his mother in this place. On account of ill health he was compelled to leave active service several years ago since which time his life has been a struggle with disease. Besides his mother he leaves a daughter, Miss Eva; a brother, Dr. F. W. Ewing, and a sister, Miss Dora, both of whom reside in Winterset, and another brother Marvin, now of Washington, D.C. The remains were interred yesterday evening at sunset, according to military custom by the members of the Grand Army. We had arranged for a more extended notice, but are compelled to defer it until next week, as we go to press earlier than usual.
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The Madisonian
Winterset, Iowa
–FridayPage 7

OBITUARY

A Biographical Sketch of the late Major Everett S. Ewing

One more vacancy in the army! Brevet Major and Captain Evarts S. Ewing, U.S.A., was born in Giles county, Tennessee, March 25, 1841.

He always had a strong desire to go through West Point and at one time was offered an appointment, but bravely gave up his ideal in accordance with the wish of his parents. They hoped he might continue the work of his father in the Presbyterian ministry. However within a week after the firing of Fort Sumpter, Evarts Ewing was riding over the country recruiting a company of volunteers to enter the war of the rebellion. Southern born, yet his sympathies then were with his country and the state which was at that time his home.

Through his efforts and that of a few others, company D., of the first Iowa cavalry was soon formed, and Evarts Ewing lacked but five votes of being made first lieutenant of the company. He was then offered the position of second lieutenant, but refused it, saying he would carry a musket as a plain private. So he rode away only bugler and private of company D., but before leaving the state, June 13th, 1861, he was made quartermaster sergeant of the regiment and for a time had sole charge of that department, there being no commissioned officer over him. He became chief bugler and commissary sergeant, and served in those grades until September 12, 1862. His campaigns were for the most part west of the Mississippi in those many smaller engagements, which although less famous were none the less heroically fought than the great battles with whose names we are more familiar. Perhaps his most marked gallantry was shown in the battle of Prairie Grove. He was appointed captain and commissary of subsistence January 13th, 1865, and was honorably mustered out October 9th, 1865. He was brevetted major, lieutenant colonel and colonel of volunteers October 6th of the same year for “faithful and meritorious services, thus fulfilling the prophecy he made four years before when told by some of his comrades, “Ewing, we all think you are a mighty fine fellow, but you are too young for the responsibility of first lieutenant.” He replied: “True I am young”. He was barely twenty years and two months, “but if I live I will wear eagles on my shoulders before this war is over.” He was the only member of the company who did.

Col. Ewing entered the regular service as second lieutenant of the sixteenth infantry February 23d, 1866, and was promoted first lieutenant March 19th, the same year, and had the brevets of captain and major U.S. army conferred upon him March 2d, 1867, “for gallant and meritorious services.” He was transferred to the thirty-fourth infantry September 21, 1866, and upon the consolidation of regiments was transferred back to his old regiment, the sixteenth, in which to his last day, he always maintained the greatest pride and interest.

He was serving in Washington in 1867 as aide-de-camp to Gen. O. O. Howard, when Gen. James R. Mower applied to the war department for an especially efficient and responsible man to act as department quartermaster on his staff, and Major Ewing was relieved of his position on Gen. Howard’s staff to fill this place on Gen. Mower’s.

Since then he served with his regiment at the various posts where it was stationed during the reconstruction days, hurried from place to place, over Mississippi, then at Nashville and Humbolt, Tennessee; then in Kentucky, being commandant of the military school in Frankfort for a time. He always said this city was the most delightful station he ever had. He was stationed in New Orleans in 1876 during the famous white league troubles, and later in different parts of the Indian Territory, Kansas and Texas. He served as regimental quartermaster of the 16th infantry from March 9, 1880, to April 30, 1880, when he was promoted to captain of B. company.

Major Ewing was retired from active service the third of January 1885, for disability in line of duty, but after a sojourn in that beautiful and healthful resort of Pass Christian, Miss., his health improved rapidly and in May 1885, Major Ewing was honored by an invitation from the board of manager’s of the world’s fair at New Orleans to take command of the largest in the state discipline is a matter which requires attention before anything else. (This statement was hard to read, and doesn’t quite make sense.) A few months under the command of Major Ewing, the wording of those papers sheared at a glance that he was the right man in the right place would doubtless have had suggested object in such a direction. Too much praise can not be given Major Ewing, the commandant, and Lieutenant Crosby, the adjutant, for the thoroughly obedient manner in which they attended to every matter of detail from the Judges report in Army and Navy Journals. Among other ---- Major Ewing might claim that if being the father of “target practice” in the U.S. army, it being through his letters written to the Army and Navy Journal and the example he set by his untiring efforts in this direction in his own company that the war department became interested in what is today so prominent a feature of our army. Major Ewing was the first commissioned officer in the department of Texas to be given a marksman’s button.

His nature was a remarkable combination of the soldier and the poet. From childhood his aims were in a military line and next to this his dreams were of distinction in the literary world. Since his retirement it has ever been his plan to devote himself to this second ambition for which from boyhood he shoed remarkable ability, but years of uneasing physical suffering have prevented him from putting on paper in form for publication the many poetic fancies, the philosophical thoughts or the ideas for improvements in military science that were constantly forming in his active mind. The enjoyment he found in conversation with learned and brilliant men amounted to almost a passion and his very eventful life offered him exceptional opportunities for gratifying the same.

Shortly after his distinguished service at the New Orleans encampment Major Ewing received a brilliant offer from the president of Honduras to take command of his armies, but the wonderful father love in his great heart was even stronger than Major Ewing’s ambition and he refused the honor for the sake of his only child, then a little girl at school. He believed it to her advantage that he remain in the United States a few years longer. It was this great love and his great will that contrary to almost every law of medical science kept him alive for three long years, long when we know that he scarcely knew a waking moment free from pain.

The generous, tender, loving husband and father, the strong, unselfish friend, the noble, pure, lofty minded man, the gentleman, handsome, modest and polished, the soldier brave, reserving, unflinching as steel, his last battle ended just at the hour for reveille June 7, 1892. With a rare smile on his face and a wondrous light in his eyes he slipped from his daughter’s arms away into the sunrise.

Note: Burial was made in the Winterset cemetery.
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Winterset Reporter
Winterset, Iowa
Thursday,November 14, 1895
Page 5, Column 2

Chips and Whetstones

Last Friday the remains of Major E. S. Ewing were disinterred from the cemetery in this city and sent to Washington, D. C., for burial in the Arlington cemetery. Major Ewing died in Winterset in June, 1893, and at time of death was a retired officer of the regular army.
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Coordinator's note: Of the two published first names, "Evarts" is correct per his gravestone.

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