21st Ohio Infantry - Three-months Regiment

Three-months Regiment

On April 27, 1861, volunteers from throughout northwestern Ohio were organized into the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry at Camp Taylor, near Cleveland, Ohio. The recruits hailed from the counties of Hancock, Defiance, Wood, Ottawa, Sandusky and Putnam. Many were farmers and farmers' sons who had spent years taming the Great Black Swamp, a huge, black, liquid mire that still blanketed a good portion of the region, in order to cultivate the rich soil beneath it. Other early volunteers were merchants, lawyers, school teachers, blacksmiths, politicians and a county sheriff who was a veteran of the Mexican-American War. Of the soldiers in the regiment, Captain, Americus V. Rice, would become a brigadier general by the end of the war. In addition, among the privates, Thomas W. Custer and Edward S. Godfrey, both would later win the Medal of Honor (Custer won two). Both later fought with the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Godfrey survived and eventually retired as a Brigadier General.

On May 23, the new regiment under the command of Colonel Jesse S. Norton, and marched to Gallipolis, Ohio, where it went into camp along the banks of the Ohio River at Camp Carrington. Two months later, the regiment crossed the river into western Virginia as a part of the force under George B. McClellan and entered into its first engagement at the Battle of Scary Creek, July 17, 1861. During the five-hour battle, the 21st O.V.I. lost nine men killed and seventeen wounded. Colonel Norton was wounded and captured, but later was paroled and exchanged.

When its three-month term of enlistment expired, the 21st O.V.I. marched to Columbus, where it was mustered out of service on August 12, 1861.