Civil War veteran, Leo Hartman, is buried in Clemons Cemetery. His brother, Fred Hartman, lost his life on a Civil War battlefield and is buried in Tennessee. (Photo by David Hirt)

BY DAVID HIRT

On Memorial Day, we remembered one of our own. Fred Hartman was born to immigrant Germans in 1842 here in Danbury Township. He grew up on a farm on Church Rd. right next to where St. Paul Lutheran Church now stands. He and his family attended church there, and it was where he was confirmed on Palm Sunday in 1857. He unfortunately lost his father when he was just two years old to a drowning accident, leaving his mother to raise the four children on her own. She did finally remarry six years later to another farmer here in Danbury.

On Oct. 5, 1861, when Fred was 19, he and his older brother, Leo Hartman, went to Cleveland and enlisted in the Union Army, as the Civil War had started earlier that year. Leo was assigned to the 100th OVI, and Fred was assigned to the 41st OVI. Fred spent the winter training with the Army in Louisville, but in February of 1862, he went with General Grant’s army to fight for the occupation of Nashville. A month later the army slogged their way south on rutted, muddy roads, often outpacing their supply wagons by several miles. Rainy weather was unrelenting as they slowly made their way on roads deep with mud.

On Sunday, April 6, 1862, the sound of firing could be heard in the distance at Pittsburg Landing on the other side of the Tennessee River. It was late in the day, but this indicated that a general engagement was happening between Union and Confederate forces.

Once they crossed the river on the next day, the 41st Ohio formed their battle line and attacked the Confederate line, pushing them back and chasing them into their secondary line of defense. Because of the zeal and enthusiasm they had as new recruits, they outran the reinforcements of their own secondary line of defense, and they were quickly overpowered by the Confederates before the Union reserves could get there.

Unfortunately, this is where Fred’s story ends. He was killed in action at the battle of Pittsburg Landing on April 7, 1862, and is buried in Shiloh National Military Park in grave #3084. In the early part of the war, it was the family’s responsibility to retrieve the body of their loved one. I’m guessing that they did not have the where-with-all to go to Tennessee to bring their son home, so he was buried on the battlefield. However, his funeral service was held right here in Danbury Township at St. Paul Lutheran Church in April, 1862. It was officiated by Rev. J. G. Hahn.

Leo survived the war and returned to Marblehead. He worked at the quarry until his retirement. Leo died in 1909 from cancer and is buried in Clemons Cemetery. Both Leo and Fred have their names engraved on marble slabs in the Ottawa County Courthouse along with other local residents who served in the Civil War. Leo is in a lobby memorial slab, while Frederick is in the commissioners’ meeting room behind the commissioners’ table on a slab just to the left.

It is for Fred Hartman and all veterans who lost their lives that we remember their service and sacrifice for our great nation, “Conceived in Liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” as Lincoln put it. Because we had Americans who stood tall and stepped forward when asked, they secured our freedom so that we can have “one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”