Frederick C. Tilden (1846-1939)

TILDEN, ALBROOK, MACY, POOLE, ADAMS, DRAKE

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 2/1/2022 at 22:11:29

From Nevada Evening Journal October 11, 1939 (page 6)

Taps to Sound for F. C. Tilden, Civil War Veteran

Special to the Journal
Ames, Oct. 11--Taps will be sounded Friday afternoon at the Ames cemetery for Frederick C. Tilden, 92, Civil War veteran, who passed way at his home here Tuesday from complications incident to his advanced years.

The funeral rites will be held Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock, at the Congregational church. Burial in the Ames cemetery will be with military honors, in charge of the local post of American Legion.

His death leaves but one Civil war veteran in Story county, Charles Hamilton of Ames now in his hundred and first year. Mr. Tilden had been failing for some time.

Mr. Tilden who was born November 16, 1846, in the village of Rochester, Mass., across the mountain slope from the birthplace of Calvin Coolidge, had been a resident of Ames since 1870.

Mr. Tilden was a member of the county soldiers' relief commission for 27 years and was president of the Ellsworth post No. 39, of the Grand Army of the Republic for 20 years from 1912. The post, which has had as many as 212 members, was the last active post in the county.

Mr. Tilden has had an active part in the business life of the community and in veterans' affairs. He had lived in his present home for the past 30 years.

The father Julius Clark Tilden operated grist mills on the White river. Between terms at the two-room school, Frederick worked on his father's farm near the village.

At the age of 16, Mr. Tilden went off to the war, a member of the company M of the 11th Vermont infantry. Within two months which carried through the terrible battle of the Wilderness, the 11th infantry had dwindled from 1,850 to 350 men.

After the fall of the Confederacy in 1865, Tilden returned to Vermont an went to school for another year. In 1867 he came west to break up a quarter section in Delaware county, Iowa. In November of 1868 he and Emma Albrook of near Manchester were married and the couple came to Ames in the fall of 1870.

For two years Mr. Tilden traveled throughout the state in fire insurance work. For the next three years he was in the drug business. Later he improved a farm south of Ames and after living there for a number of years returned to Ames in 1897.

Here he was engaged in business until 1910 with his nephews, L. C. Tilden and J. G. Tilden, in the Tilden Brothers company, and from 1917 to 1937 as president of the Tilden Grocery company.

He is survived by four children, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The children are Dr. W. C. Tilden of Stanwood, Ia., Mrs. E. C. Macy of East Orange, N. J., Dr. Julius F. Tilden of Charles City, Ia., and Mrs. Agnes Tilden Poole of Ames, with whom he made his home. The grandchildren are Mrs. Clinton J. Adams and Frederick T. Poole of Ames, M. W. Tilden of Dover, Del., and Russell Tilden of Stanwood, Ia. The great-grandchildren are John Frederick Adams, Bruce Macy Adams and Marna Lynn Adams of Ames and Warren Tilden of Stanwoood, Ia.

His wife died Jan. 24, 1923.

At his death Mr. Tilden had fulfilled an ambition to live longer than the grandfather he greatly admired, Joseph Tilden, a veteran of the Revolutionary war, who died at 89. The last of his seven brothers and sister, Abigail Tilden Drake of Chicago, died 19 years ago.

Tilden's baptism of fire in the Civil war came in the heavy fighting at Spottsylvania courthouse. His regiment was in the midst of bitter fighting, where men struggled hand to hand, Union and Confederate flags on opposite sides of the same breastwork.

He was unscathed in the butchery at Cold Harbor and the 12-day siege at that place. The dread of the first volley was the worst part of the experience in the war, Mr. Tilden said.

Mr. Tilden came out of the struggle a corporal. His brother George, father of L. C. and J. C. Tilden, reached the rank of major in the war.