A Standish Descendant Dies, and Kennewick's Civil War Veterans Thin to Six
Oscar Howe left his wife and baby in 1862 to ride with an Illinois cavalry regiment, homesteaded his way west, and spent his last decade in Kennewick — where his passing leaves only six of the old G.A.R. post.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Oscar Howe, aged 85 years, died at his home in this city at 9 o'clock Saturday evening. Death was caused by diabetes, from which the aged man had suffered for a long time. He had been in very feeble health since last November and had been confined to his bed for more than three weeks.
The funeral was held at 10 o'clock Monday morning under the auspices of the local G. A. R. and the W. R. C., the funeral sermon being preached by Rev. K. S. Tontz of the Congregational church. Interment was in River View cemetery.
Oscar Howe, during the years of his long life, was a staunch American and a sturdy patriot, and prided himself not a little on being a direct descendant of Capt. Miles Standish. He was born in Ontario county, New York, October 27, 1831. At the age of 19 he came with his parents to Lake county, Illinois, where he was married December, 1860, to Mary E. Adams.
In a little more than two years after his marriage he left his wife and baby to answer his country's call and enlisted in Company I, Sixteenth Illinois cavalry, and served until the close of the Civil war. In 1869 he moved to Iowa, and thirteen years later he again moved westward and settled in South Dakota, and was among the pioneer homestead farmers of that state. He came to Kennewick in 1907 that he and Mrs. Howe might spend the last years of their life with their two children.
Mr. Howe leaves his widow, a son, H. A. Howe, of Spirit Lake, Idaho (a former business man of this city), and a daughter, Elisa A. Sherman, who has made her home with her parents for a number of years. A second daughter died more than 30 years ago. H. A. Howe had been with his father for several days before his death and Mrs. Howe arrived Sunday.
Mr. Howe had been an active member of S. G. Cosgrove Post G. A. R. since its organization, and his death thins the ranks of Kennewick veterans to six.
“Mr. Howe had been an active member of S. G. Cosgrove Post G. A. R. since its organization, and his death thins the ranks of Kennewick veterans to six.”
The Grand Army of the Republic posts that once anchored civic life in every Washington town were emptying out by 1916, and the paper counted the survivors like a roll call. Howe's life — New York birth, Illinois farm, cavalry enlistment, Dakota homestead, retirement near his children — is a compressed map of nineteenth-century American migration. Kennewick today is a city of newcomers; a century ago its old age was measured in veterans who had crossed the continent twice.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.