The Battle of Chickamauga Creek, 20 September 1863

This was the very first defeat for the Army of the Cumberland. Rosecrans never recovered from the shock of this battle and lost his command. His army was surrounded and starving. The dogs that were the mascots of these regiments started disapearing, and bark was missing from the trees as far as the weakened men could reach. Cold fall rains ignited camp sickness. My gg grandfather Hiram Sinclair was there. When the army reorganized, and supported by the Union Army of the Tennesee, they stormed up the mountains of Chattanooga, and over some of the old battle field of Chicamauga, where the rains had reduced the shallow graves to mere mud puddles and their brothers who had died are now, with limbs exposed to the elements, marking their final resting place. The 1st. Ohio Cavarly is now imortalized in stone here, marking the spot of a fierce sabre charge. Hiram came home, discharged in Columbia Tennesee in early 1864. He was honored for his wartime service last October at his graveside by the Civil War Reinactors of Indiana and about 60 of his children's children.

Donald Sinclair, Indianapolis