Throwback Thursday: Jacob Reinig

"It is a beautiful and comfortable life to be a soldier when there is peace in the country, but in wartime it is hard,” Jacob Reinig told his sister, writing for a military encampment outside Chattanooga, Tennessee, on December 2, 1863. Jacob had joined Company C of the 10th Iowa Infantry two years earlier, the first company of volunteers raised in Tama County. His willingness join the Army showed his devotion to his adopted home.

Jacob left Bavaria at age 17 to escape military conscription. After two years in Connecticut, he moved to Iowa, where he became a U.S. citizen at age 22. The next year he married Eliza Zehrung, and by 24 he, Eliza, and their son, William, were farming northwest of Toledo. Jacob took his citizenship oath seriously, so much so that he volunteered for the Union army when the Civil War began in 1861.

Though he loved his new country, he also loved his family, and after two years at war he desperately wanted to see them again. “I hope that I may come back from this war happy and healthy to my wife and my children,” he wrote. He had two young boys at home, including one born just a few months after Jacob left for war. Little Franklin Jacob would not meet his father for three years.

“I would love to hear that we have once again peace in this country and we can all go home and be happy and healthy, but I fear that the war is going to continue on for some time to come,” Jacob wrote in 1864. After three years of war he had three goals: to never see battle again, to find his family happy and healthy, and to move west to join his brothers and sister in Montana, Oregon, or Washington. He would realize but one. There would be more battle and more bloodshed before Jacob was discharged September 28, 1864. Others in his company volunteered for three more years, but Jacob had no interest in more death. He made his way from Kingston, Georgia, back to Toledo.

There may have been opportunities to move west, but Jacob never took advantage of them. He would often visit his brother, Michael, one of the founding fathers of Helena, Montana, but he would always return home to the farm in Toledo Township. He and Eliza would continue to expand the farm and their family, becoming more prosperous – even as Jacob battled health problems stemming from his time at war.

Jacob would spend his entire life on that farm. In his final days his wife of 50 years and all nine of his living children would be by his side. His funeral, held 106 years ago today, took place at the farm, with his comrades from the Grand Army of the Republic filling the house and acting as pallbearers. His obituary summed up his life with these words: “With the satisfaction of a well spent life; with the respect of a host of friends, Jacob Reinig has gone to join the innumerable caravan of early-day settlers who have preceded him to the valley from whence no traveler returns. His memory will live long for he was one whom it was a pleasure to know.”