Davenport, Iowa, and there Mr. Hanks received honorable discharge, and being a veteran received his final discharge August 15, 1865. He went through over four years' hard service for " Uncle Sam," and although he participated in many of the bloodiest combats of the war, he never received a wound, although his garments were riddled with bullets. After the trials and hardships of warfare had ceased, he was engaged in farming in Jasper County, Iowa, but afterward moved to Nevada, and still later to Des Moines, finally returning to Story County, where he has ever since resided. He has always identified himself with the Republican party, and cast his first presidential vote for Abraham Lincoln. He was married January 1, 1866, the year following his location in Story County, to Miss Sarah Nelson, a native of Ohio, born in 1842, and to them a family of six children have been born: Ella (wife of William Breezley, a farmer of Kansas), Lydia (wife of Charles Batterson, a tiller of the soil in Story County), Jesse (who is a well-educated young man, and assists his parents on the home farm), Julia (aged thirteen years), Della (aged eleven), and Oscar (aged six years). Story County was very sparsely settled at the time of Mr. Hanks' location, there being only onehouse between Nevada and Cambridge; and the now flourishing town of Ames comprised but six houses.
DeWitt Clinton Hanks is a farmer and stock-raiser of Section 3, Union Township, Story County, Iowa, and was born in Boone County, Ill., on the 18th of September, 1847, being the sixth child in his parents' family [see sketch of Mrs. Miami Netterfield]. DeWitt C. received the advantages of the common schools of Iowa, and in his youth, besides acquiring a fair practical education, he learned the details of farm work of his father, and has since put the knowledge thus learned into practical execution, and, as a result, is one of the well-to-do agriculturists of this region, being the owner of an excellently improved farm of 160 acres. This valuable property he, with the efficient help of his worthy wife, has accumulated through many years of toil, economy and frugality, and his career is an excellent example for the young men of the present day to follow. He has always been a patron of schools, in fact, of all good works, and for the past ten years has been intimately connected with their progress and development in Story County, and has always urged the paying of ample wages and the securing of competent instructors, He commenced life for himself at the age of fifteen years, and here a record of his war life will be in order, for at that age he donned his suit of blue, shouldered his musket and became a servant of " Uncle Sam." He enlisted in Company B, Seventeenth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, was assigned to the Second Brigade, Third Division, Seventeenth Army Corps, but was afterward transferred to the Fifteenth Army Corps, and was mustered into service at Keokuk, Iowa, on the 10th of March, 1861, and was placed in the Western Department of the army under Gen. John A. Logan, afterward under Gen. McPherson, then Gen. Grant, and also under Gen. Sherman. His regiment and company were engaged in the following engagements: Shiloh, Iuka, the three days' fight at Corinth, second battle of Fort DoNelson, Port Gibson, Jackson, Champion's Hill, in which engagement his division was sent in double quick time, a distance of five miles, to the assistance of Gen. Grant's army, many of his brave comrades falling by the wayside of exhaustion and sunstroke. In this engagement lie received a terrible wound in the shoulder, by a piece of shell, and for about eight months was confined to the hospital. After spending the last days of his convalescence at home on furlough he