Message:
I have always had a warm spot in my heart for George Oakes. When I fell, wounded, at Port Hudson, George Oakes at the risk of his own life carried me to a place of safety. Being in close range of the enemys bullets, had I been left where I fell I could not possibly have survived.
These were the words spoken by Edwin R. Herren in April 1906 upon returning from the funeral of George W. Oakes, a former member of his old company, Company D, Fourth Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry.
George Oakes was a lumberman and a day shy of his nineteenth birthday when he enlisted in the Union Army on the first day of May 1861 in Kilbourn City, Wisconsin, for a term of 3 years. He mustered in on the 2nd day of July 1861 at Racine, Wisconsin and mustered out on the 9th day of July 1864 at New Orleans, Louisiana.
Died April 1906, buried in Plainville, Wisconsin. |
