Ridge Historical Society
Part III – For Memorial Day: The Civil War and the Ridge
Carol Flynn, RHS Communications
Yesterday we posted about the three Wilcox brothers, Wilbur, Thomas, and Willard, who joined Company A First Illinois Artillery Volunteers (“Battery A”) to fight for the Union cause in the Civil War. The Wilcox family was one of the first families on the Ridge, arriving here in 1844.
The Rexford brothers, Roscoe Eugene and Everett Heber, were recruited into Battery A by their friend Wilbur Wilcox. The Rexford family had been on the Ridge since the 1830s. Other Ridge friends also joined Battery A – Harry and Francis Morgan, from the Morgan family that gave Morgan Park its name.
According to a history of the Battery published in 1899, the Rexford brothers were “delighted” to join their friends at Camp Smith, Cairo, Illinois, in July of 1861. But soon, youthful visions of camaraderie and glory gave way to the grim reality of war.
After the Battle of Fort Donelson at the Tennessee – Kentucky border early in 1862, Roscoe fell ill. He was sent back to Cairo, where his father met him. He died before they reached home on the Ridge. Two-thirds of Civil War fatalities were due to illnesses such as malaria, typhoid and pneumonia. Roscoe was 21 years old. He is buried in Mt. Greenwood Cemetery
Everett Rexford became the bugler for the Battery. The men had true affection for the bugler but gave him a hard time for early morning wake-up calls by stealing the mouthpiece of the bugle and other tricks.
The bugler played “taps” when a fellow soldier died. Presumably Everett Rexford had to perform this duty when his friend Sgt. Wilbur Wilcox, 26, was killed in an ambush by Confederate soldiers in July 1863 in Mississippi. Wilcox had volunteered to be part of a group that went behind enemy lines to procure food for the horses.
Everett had a faithful horse named Japhet that had been with him since the beginning of the war. He left the horse with his friend Thomas Wilcox and shortly afterwards, in July of 1864, both Wilcox and the horse were captured by the Confederates during a skirmish outside of Atlanta. Wilcox spent the next eight months in the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp. What happened to Japhet is not known.
Everett Rexford survived the war, becoming a very prominent citizen of Blue Island. He served as village president and cut a dashing figure for many years leading mounted parades of local Civil War veterans through the streets on Decoration Day, May 30, the forerunner of Memorial Day. He served as musical director of Battery A’s veterans’ association and blew all the old battery calls on his “old war bugle” at their reunions. He was made the National Bugler of the GAR. He died in 1920 at age 78 and was buried in Mount Greenwood Cemetery.
Francis and Harry Morgan were two of the sons of Thomas Morgan, the man who brought his family to the United States from England on his own ship and purchased much of the land on the Ridge.
Francis was educated in a military school in the East and was recognized for his military leadership skills and efficiency. He started as a lieutenant with Battery A and rose to captain. Plagued by health issues, he resigned his commission and returned to Chicago, taking a job on the governor’s staff. He died in 1887 at age 50. The Battery A history noted that Francis was a “thorough gentleman … held in the highest esteem … whose integrity of character and innate honesty has never been questioned.”
Harry Morgan, Francis’s older brother, made it through the war and returned to the Ridge, farming the Morgan lands. He and Everett Rexford became brothers-in-law through marriage when they married sisters Emily and Sarah Robinson, respectively, from another early Ridge family. Harry eventually moved to Blue Island as the family land was sold to developers; some of the land became the Village of Morgan Park. He died in 1893 at age 60.
The Morgan family is buried in Graceland Cemetery on the north side.
There is a monument to Battery A at Rosehill Cemetery on the north side. The names of those who died in service are inscribed in the base. W. J. Wilcox and R. E. Rexford are listed.
These are just a few of the stories of men from the Ridge who served in the Civil War.
Women joined the war effort, also. At least three U.S. Army Nurses who served during the Civil War have been identified from Blue Island. Tomorrow we will share their stories.