The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1948-09-16
True Tales About Ohio
Concluded from page II

David, the Civil War. Three from
the same family who fought in as
many early wars.
Gray was the last surviving soldier
of the Revolution. He died March
20, 1868, from natural causes in his
old hewed-log home at the age of
104 years, two months and % days.
That was 80 years ago and none
were left-John Gray was the last
Revolutionary soldier to fall.
Is Year Old Soldier
Born at Mount Vernon, Virginia,
soldier of the War of 1912 and
January e, .1764, Gray was only 16
when he entered the Continental
army and was handed the musket
which had fallen from his fathers
hands when he was killed at White
Plains only a few days before. He
carried that gun until the war was
over.
Gray was in the fight at Williams
burg and was one of the $50 men
on the dangerous but successful
expedition of Major Ramsey. He
also was at Yorktown at the final
surrender of the British. He then
was eighteen. Mustered out at Rich
mond, Virginia, at the close of the
war he went back to Mount Vernon
and got a job as field laborer-for
General Washington.
Married twice in Virginia and once
in Ohio, Gray survived his three
wives and all of his children except
one daughtr with whom he lived in
Noble County, She was eighty at
the time her father died.
Gets $500 Pension
Gray learned to read and write
before the Revolution and joined the
Methodist Church when he was %,
attending services regularly for 78
years. He made his living by farm
labor and was old and infrm before
the government granted him a tardy
pension of $500 year.
This, the veteran declared, would
keep him in tobacco, "sich as it is
nowadays, and help feed his hound"
He used tobacco for over 100 years.
He died of old age in the one
story house where he had spent more
than the last 40 years of his life.
More than 1000 persons attended
his funeral services, preached by a
group of ministers in a grove near
the little Gray home. One of the
preachers was former army chap
lain attached to the 9th Ohio
Volunteer Cavalry.
Gray was buried only $50 yards
from the little hewed-log house
where he lived and died. He not
only was the last surviving Ohio
Revolutionary soldier but the last to
die in the nation as a whole.
Civil War
The last Revolutionary veteran
still was living when Lorin Andrews,
an Ashland County farm boy achiev-
ed the honor of being the first
Ohioan to volunteer in the. Union
army in the Civil War Believing
war inevitable, Andrews joined the
army in February, 1861, and in
April raised a company in Knox
County for the Fourth Regiment and
Twas elected its colonel.
Andrews was born April l, 1919,
in a log cabin in Ashland, the fourth
child born in the town. His father,
Alanson Andrews, later moved to a
farm southwest of the village.
When the boy was II he delivered,
with much credit, a Fourth of July
address at Carter's Grove, east of
Ashland, and from 1840 to I843 was
a student at Gambler. Lacking
money however, he was forced to
leave the school and get job teach
ing in Ashland Academy. There.
without a teacher, he continued his
studies and lectured before institutes
throughout Ohio.
College President
In 1854 he was made president OF
Gambler and brought up the school
from an attendance of 30 to an en-
rolIment of more than 200 pupils
He was given the degree of L. L. d
by Princeton University. 1t was just
after that Andrews volunteered ir
the army.
Andrews Immediately was assigned
to service in Virginia, where because
, of exposure he contracted typhoid
, fever and died September Is, 1861
, barely six months after he hat
/ volunteered. He then was 42 year!
, old. Andrews was buried at Gam
bier in spot of his own previou!
. selection.
Though non-existant in Revolution
airy War times and merely tn,
Q budding Northwest Territory in 1912
! Ohio's Civil War record is an i'm
pressive one.
t The states part in later wars arr
in the ken of narSons still living an.