Every Family Has a Maverick, Part 1

Every family has a maverick (or two), and one of my family’s mavericks was my great-great-great-grandfather Walter White Collins.  Walter was born in Guernsey County, Ohio, in 1838 and moved with his family to Lineville in south central Iowa around 1855. In 1857, Walter, then 19 years old, married Elizabeth Paul, and settled on a small farm next to those owned by his father and two older brothers. He and Elizabeth had two children over the next few years, and had it not been for the Civil War, that might well have been the end of his story.

Walter W. Collins, 1863, daguerrrotype found in Civil War pension file, Washington, DC: National Archives.

As with many other young men, the Civil War led Walter to join the military. In March 1862, as the war entered its second year, he rode to Princeton, Missouri, in a neighboring county and enlisted as a private in the Third Missouri State Militia Cavalry.[1] He provided his own horse, valued at $65 and thus worth more than the valuation of his farm on the 1860 census. By joining the state militia, Walter increased his chances of remaining close to home. The Missouri State Militia was not part of the Union Army and was charged with protecting state residents from pro-slavery guerilla fighters who objected to Missouri’s support of the Union (U.S. Pension and Record Office 1902).

In November 1862, after serving with the militia for eight months, Walter ran into some trouble. As he later explained to a Pension Office examiner:

I obtained permission from Capt. Ballou one day to ride outside the ranks and pick some cherries by the roadside. Maj. Hubbard, of the 7th Mo. Cavalry, rode up and ordered me back to ranks in a peremptory manner. I did not move as promptly thought I should, and so he drew his saber on me. I questioned his authority as I did not know him and told him I would get back to my command when I got ready. I then went back to my company. That evening I learned from Capt. Ballou that I was to be tried for insubordination as Maj. Hubbard, to whom I had replied sharply, had charge of the rear guard, and I should have obeyed him without question. Capt. Ballou advised me to quietly leave the company, and I did so that same night. The guard, by Capt. Ballou's direction, passed me out.

Walter then rode home—taking with him the militia’s “Austrian rifle and accoutrements” valued at $13.25—but didn’t stay In Lineville for long. Perhaps thinking that he had best stay out of the way of possible prosecution for his desertion, he changed his name—adopting the very creative alias of John Jones—and moved nearly 150 miles to Washington, Iowa. He never returned to his home in Lineville again.

Walter W.Collins. 1862. Description from Compiled Military Record: 7th Missouri State Militia Cavalry. Washington, DC: National Archives
John Jones. 1863. Description from Compiled Military Record: 9th Iowa Cavalry. Washington, DC: National Archives

Walter’s troubles with military discipline don’t seem to have soured him on army life. In August 1863, he enlisted again, this time in the 9th Iowa Volunteer Cavalry. He initially tried to enlist as a veteran, at a higher rate of pay, but after learning he would need to take an examination and provide his discharge papers, he opted to enlist as a non-veteran. Despite this set-back, he was immediately promoted to the rank of sergeant and given the important role of commissary sergeant, responsible for obtaining and distributing the company’s rations (Logan 1910).

9th Iowa Cavalry Order Book. 1864. Order reducing John Jones to ranks. Washington, DC: National Archives.

After six months of training near St. Louis, Missouri, in May 1864, Walter’s regiment was sent by steamboat down the Mississippi river to Arkansas, where they remained for the next two years, mustering out in the spring of 1866, nearly a year after the end of the war (Logan 1910). For the most part, Walter seems to have kept out of trouble during this second enlistment, with the exception of an incident in September 1864 when he and most of the other non-commissioned officers in his company were reduced to ranks for “gambling and disobedience of orders.”

Walter’s company commander may have regretted losing all his experienced NCOs at once because, in May 1865, with the note that his demotion had been for “an offense not heinous and having comported himself as a soldier ever since,” Walter was reinstated as sergeant. A few months later, he was made his company’s quartermaster sergeant, responsible for obtaining, maintaining, and transporting all of the company’s property, and he mustered out at that rank in Little Rock, Arkansas, in February 1866 (Logan 1910).

9th Iowa Cavalry Order Book. 1865. Order reinstating John Jones as sergeant. Washington, DC: National Archives.

At this point, most soldiers returned to their former homes and lives (not to mention their wives and children), but Walter did not. According to his brother, Walter wrote his wife to say he had been mustered out and would return home soon. When he never arrived, the family assumed he was dead. His wife remarried in 1873, and her second husband’s biography in a Wayne County, Iowa, county history says that Walter was “supposed to have lost his life after his discharge” (Anonymous 1886). Meanwhile, Walter, still using the name John Jones, had begun to build a new life for himself in Arkansas, complete with a new career and a new wife and children.

To be continued…

9th Iowa Cavalry. 1866. John Jones discharge certificate. Washington, DC: National Archives.

[1] The town of Lineville, Iowa, got its name from its location on the Iowa-Missouri border and is closer to Princeton, Missouri, than to its own county seat. In addition, in spring 1862, Missouri substantially expanded its militia due to considerable unrest in the state, which was on the border of the Confederacy and allowed the enslavement of human beings despite siding with the Union in the Civil War.

Works Cited

Anonymous. 1886. “W.E. McIntosh.” Biographical and Historical Record of Wayne and Appanoose Counties, Iowa. Chicago, IL: Inter-State Publishing Company, p. 424.

Logan, Brigadier General Guy E, Adjutant, General. 1910. “Historical Sketch: Ninth Regiment Iowa Volunteer Cavalry.” Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers in the War of the Rebellion Together with Historical Sketches of Volunteer Organizations, 1861-1866, Vol. IV. Des Moines, IA. Emory H. English, State Printer.

U.S. Pension and Record Office (War Department). 1902. Organization and Status of Missouri Troops (Union and Confederate) in Service During the Civil War. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.