Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1907 — Girard Was Not The First. [ARTICLE]

Girard Was Not The First.

The long cherished belief that it was a member of Jasper county’s first company for the civil war, Wm. T. Girard, _of Monon, who was the first Indiana soldier killed in battle in the civil war, t&ust be abandoned. The Monticello Her aid raised doubts about the cl im in its last week’s issue, and tho it did not give the names and places of death of any earlier victims of that great conflict it did set us to looking the matter up, and by consulting Adjutant General Terrill’s reports, we found where two other Indiana soldisia had been killed previous to the date of Girard’s death. That was at Big Laurel, Va., July 7h, 1861. The two whose deaths in battle or presumably in battle, preceded that of Giard, were Charles Denger of Marion county, who is listed as having been killed in West Virginia, about June 15th, 1861, or 22 diys earlier than Girard's death. It seems the facts abont Degnan’s death are rather uncertain, however and he may not have been killed in battle at all. He was in Company C, of the 7th Indiana regiment.

More definite is the information about John C. Hollenback, of Ohio county. He was a member of Company C, of the 11th Indiana regiment, and was killed at Kelley’s Island, Va., June, 27. 1861, or just 10 days before Girard.

Of course these were not the first Inndiana soldiers to lose their lives in the war, for quite a number died of sickness before these dates. Of course it may be that neither of these met death at the hands of an armed enemy, but the presumption is that they did. At this battle of Dyson Delphi, received a wound from which he died some days later. However, whether Girard was the first man killed iu battle or not, the ever to be remembered fact remains that the first union company orgiuizid expressly for this war was General Milroy’s company, organized here in Rensselaer, and drilled for mouths before Fort Sumpter was captured.