Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1891-04-23
VIM. NEWBY'S CASE.
Remarkably Story of an lIli-
nois Soldier.
BURIED ON THE FIELD OF SHILOH.

Yet at the Present Time Living at His
Old Home in White County, His
Freaks of His Memory - He Knows
What Happened Before the War, But
Fails to Recognize His wife-His Hair
and Eyes Change Color, but 1dentifca-
tion is Complete.
ST. LOUIS, Mo-, April .234--At the battle
of Shiloh, Sunday, April 6, 1862, Capt.
Gilbert j. George, now of St Louis, was
orderly sergeant of company D, Fortieth
Illinois volunteers, of the Union forces
Tuesday night of April s, 1862, Orderly
Sergeant George, in command of a burial
detail of twelve privates of his company,
buried in the trenches dug on the battle
field William Newly, also private SOL
dier of company d, Fortieth Illinois
volunteers. Nine men of that company
had been killed on the bloody field of
Shiloh, and Newby's body was the third
on the list to be wrapped in blankets and
laid in soldiers sepulchre, the long and
CHASTITY trench. He was shot through the
head. a musket ball having crushed into
his brain on the left side, just above and
a little in the rear of the left ear.
Last Sunday Capt. George, who became
lieutenant at Shiloh, left St. Louis, and
going to farmhouse near Mill Shoals,
White county, Ills, saw living the Will
lam Newly whom he had buried on the
battlefield twenty-nine years ago and
positively identified him as Newly, the
dead come to life" For twenty nine
years the old soldier whose death and
burial are duly recorded in the war de-
partment archives at Washington City,
has been drifting from poorhouse to poor
house and from insane asylum to insane
asylum, strange and piteous wreck He
is now safe with his wife and children on
the very farm from which he enlisted in
1861 at his country's call to arms.
His Memory Partly Obliterated.
He remembers the farm and some of his
old associates, but has forgotten his wife,
forgotten the fact of his marriage, for
gotten his children. His wife, hurrying
from sons home in Texas, arrived at the
old farmhouse only Tuesday She saw
her dead husband come back to life again,
but he looked her in the face and said
calmly:
Il was never married. l have no wife. 1
have no children. But l am William
Newly, and / was raised on this farm"
Stranger still, the William Newly who
enlisted in company d, Fortieth Illinois,
in August, 1861, was fair-haired and
blGe-eyed man, while the William Newly
who returns from the grave in 1891 is
man with black eyes and with black hair,
streaked heavily with gray.
The Identification Complete.
Yet, by certain marks on his person and
oy the most searching tests to which he
has been put, the man is identified as the
same William Newly. Seven of his
former comrades of Company D, all of
whom were in the burying detail that
placed his body in the trench, swear that
he is the man they knew and buried His
own mother swears that he is her son,
William Newly. He was admitted to the
White county poorhouse eighteen
months ago, and gave his name. Mem
bers of the family and others visited him
and recognized him. Finally his mother
asked that he be taken to his fathers
grave, and he was led there
Built the Vault Himself
This is my fathers grave" he an
nounced to them quietly. Il built that
vault myself" And he told of where lie
had ouarried the sandstone, and even
gave the names of the two oxen that had
hauled the stone to the grave. Still he
maintained that he was not married nor
ever had been. On the side of his
head, just where William Newly was
shot at Shiloh, Capt. George
saw the place where the awful
wound had been trephined The man has
a faint recollection of what happened at
Shiloh. He claims to have been taken
from the field by the Confederates and
sent to Andersonville prison, where he
lay for months, and that afterward he had
spent most of the years at various poor
houses.