As detailed in the earlier post about Lucius John Niles, Civil War service could kill a soldier before he ever saw battle. Zacharias L. Correll, our 2nd cousin 5x removed on the Graffius/Correll branch, met a similar fate. He was born in Crawford Township, Coshocton County, Ohio, in 1837, the fourth child of ten born to Israel & Catherine (Miller) Correll. At the 1850 Census, when Zacharias was 13, the Corrells had moved northeast to a farm near Sugarcreek in Tuscarawas County.
By the 1860 Census, Zacharias had moved out and moved west, and was working as a carpenter in Peru, Indiana. He was living there when he volunteered to serve three years as a private in the 127th Indiana Infantry on November 25, 1863. However, he did not muster into the regiment until January 12, 1864, at Camp Anderson in Michigan City, Indiana. It appears that he was promoted to corporal shortly after joining. At enlistment, he was described as 25 years old, 5 feet 6 inches tall, with light complexion, brown eyes, and brown hair.
A week into training at Camp Anderson, Correll took a brief trip back to Peru, where he married 22-year-old Nancy Ann King on January 21, 1864, in a ceremony officiated by her father Henry M. King.
Correll’s regiment remained in quarters at Michigan City until the spring of 1864, where it added horses and was renamed that 12th Indiana Cavalry. Sometime that winter Correll took ill and was sent to the army hospital at Camp Mitchell in Kendallville, Indiana. He died there of typhoid fever and pneumonia on April 7, 1864—162 years ago today . He had never been paid. Correll was officially mustered out and his body was shipped to his widow in Peru and was buried in the King family plot at Mount Hope Cemetery.
Three weeks later, on April 28, 1864, the 12th Indiana Cavalry left Camp Anderson for Nashville, Tennessee, and would see action in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.
On July 5, Nancy Ann (King) Correll applied for a widow’s pension and later received it (#29,069). For a while she worked as a domestic, but then in 1873 she married a widower with four children named Benjamin Franklin Smith. (She had to surrender her pension when she did.) The Smiths would not have any children of their own.
Nancy Ann (King Correll) Smith died on November 25, 1898, and was buried beside Zacharias at Mount Hope Cemetery. This is the same cemetery where Cole Porter (born in Peru) was laid to rest 100 years after Zacharias.
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