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Looking for your Emmet County ancestor during the Civil War? The information below may be of help. This information is taken from The History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa, A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement, The Pioneer Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois, 1917, pages 67-68.
According to the United States census of 1860, Emmet County then had a population of 105 and Dickinson County 180. The former had been an organized county but a little over one year and the latter less than three years when this census was taken. At the beginning of the war neither county had telegraph communication, fast mail train nor local newspaper. The only means of communication was by the slow mail route then in use, and several days elapsed after the fall of Fort Sumter before the news reached Estherville and Spirit Lake. When the news did arrive, there was no difference of opinion as to the course to be pursued. Every vote in both counties was cast for Mr. Lincoln in 1860, and the few inhabitants were unanimous in declaring that the national administration must be upheld in its effort to suppress the rebellion. Owing to the location of the two counties, Iowa's quota under the first call was filled through the prompt response from those parts of the state where better transportation facilities existed and the people of Emmet and Dickinson had no opportunity under that call to demonstrate their loyalty.
Under the call of July 2, 1861, an independent cavalry company was organized at Fort Dodge, in which a number of men from Emmet and Dickinson counties were enrolled. The company was sent to the Army of the Potomac and was subsequently attached to the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry instead of an Iowa cavalry regiment. Nathaniel B. Baker, then adjutant-general of Iowa, called the attention of the war department to this error, and after repeated efforts on his part the company was formally credited to Iowa's quota of troops, though it continued to serve with the Army of the Potomac until the close of the war.
Scattered through other Iowa regiments were Emmet and Dickinson county men. To give a complete list would be almost impossible at this late day and consequently no attempt is made to do so. It is stated on apparently good authority that five-twelfths of the entire population of Emmet County were enlisted in the service of the United States at some period or another during the war, while in Dickinson there were at one less than a dozen men liable to enrollment for military duty.
