1861
The year following the organization of the township, the Civil War commenced. The town paid no bounties, but furnished its quota of men. In the Hennepin County “Roster of Military Men” are many familiar names:
Anthony Trump
J. Jones
Ben and Samuel Rice George Forsaith
Eben, Samuel
Joel Howe Horace Bohanon
Joseph Gagne, Jr.
Israel Parker
J. Hamilton Bartlett
Charles Libby Gilbert
Merritt James Nash
J. P. Shumway
H. R. Stillman
And others…
Robbinsdale was just a twinkle in the eye Andrew B. Robbins when he joined the “Boys in Blue,” enlisting in the Eighth Regiment of Minnesota Volunteers, with which he served until the close of the Civil war. His company was on active duty in connection with the suppression of the Indian uprising under General Sully, going to the relief of Captain Fisk and later was sent south, where it was attached to General Schofield, Twenty-third Army Corps, participating in the second battle of Murfreesboro, and also in the battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Afterward the command was joined to General Sherman’s forces. Robbins saw active duty on some of the most hotly contested battle fields of the South. The future Mrs. Andrew B. Robbins, Adelaide Walker the Civil War helping her mother and her sister Helen with diets, linen room, dressings and “home letters” at Camp Chase and Tripler General Hospitals through Civil War and was granted “honorable discharge” by Dorothy Dix, chief of volunteer nurses.
This post is the sixth in a series based on the book Robbinsdale Then and Now by Helen Blodgett