Los Angeles County
Biographies
HENRY C.
ASHBAUGH
Henry C. Ashbaugh, oldtime newspaperman and defender of the Union in the dark days of Civil strife, was born in Worthington, Ohio, August 27, 1844. He was the oldest son of Lewis Sells and Harriet L. Ashbaugh, the former a physician and minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. At eleven years of age, Henry C. Ashbaugh embarked in the printing business, at West Union, Iowa, by assuming the duties of printer’s devil, following the same occupation in various gradations at other towns (as preachers in those days were moved annually). In the summer of 1861, when the family moved to Camden Mills, Illinois, a suburb of Rock Island, Henry then a lad of seventeen enlisted as a private soldier in Company H of the Forty-fifth Illinois Regiment, Illinois Infantry, better known as the “Lead Mine Regiment.”
In December following, the regiment landed in Cairo, Illinois, ready for the war, and less than a month later, as one of Grant’s regiments in McClelland’s division, embarked on transports for the battles of Forts Henry and Donelson and Shiloh. This young soldier, then less than seventeen and a half years of age, participated in the tramps, camps, fights and charges connected with that memorable campaign.
At the battle of Shiloh, near noon of the first day he was struck in the back by a spent canister shot from a rebel cannon and carried from the field evidently mortally wounded. However, by the evening of the next day he followed his regiment back to their tents from which they had been driven the day before. The remainder of the year 1862 the regiment spent mostly in helping to guard railroads and driving rebel soldiers out of Tennessee. The next year, under Grant and Logan, these soldiers fought some ten or more battles which resulted in the capture of the mighty military stronghold of Vicksburg. After this surrender, the Forty-fifth Illinois Regiment, because of meritorious conduct, was assigned the honor of being the first regiment to enter the captured city and was made provost guard of the same, until the army went north several months later to take part in the Atlanta campaign and “Sherman’s March to the Sea.”
After the capture of Vicksburg, comrade Ashbaugh, by order of General Logan, was placed in charge of the “wall paper” or “Daily Citizen” printing office, and was later transferred to the printing department of the headquarters of the Army of the Tennessee at Chattanooga, Atlanta and Louisville. He was discharged from the service at the expiration of his three years and three months term.
Soon after his return from the army in 1865 he purchased an interest in a newspaper at his home town in New Boston, Illinois, and was almost continuously engaged in the daily and weekly newspaper business in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin, until compelled to retire in October 1909 because of ill health.
As first editor and publisher of the “Newton Kansan,” which began in August of 1872, he continued in these relations for fifteen years, during, in some respects, the most eventful period in the history of Newton and Harvey county. In 1882 he was commissioned postmaster at Newton by President Arthur, which position he held for six and a half years, until removed by order of President Cleveland, because of his politics as editor of a republican newspaper.
In April 1870, at Camden, Illinois, he married Emeline E. Archer, who was always his wife and companion. To them were born three sons and four daughters. Three daughters are now deceased. Those living are Frederick N. of Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Mrs. Harriet L. Kern of Long Beach, California; Lewis B. of Santa Barbara, California; and William H. of Long Beach, California.
During the last few years of their life, Mr. and Mrs. Ashbaugh made their home with their daughter, Mrs. S. L. Kern and family, and it was at their home in Lawrence, Kansas, after several years of failing health, that death ended the earthly career of Mr. Ashbaugh, March 13th 1916. His wife survived him six years, having passed away at the home of her daughter in Long Beach, California on Christmas day of 1921. They both lie buried in the cemetery at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where they had lived during the years of 1890 to 1902.
Mr. Ashbaugh was a member of the Masonic, the Royal Arch Chapter and Knights Templar lodges and also of the Grand Army of the Republic.
Transcribed
3-31-12 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: California
of the South Vol. II, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages
191-193, Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 Marilyn R. Pankey.
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