Will County IL Archives Biographies.....McAllister, Captain Edward  
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Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com December 3, 2007, 6:19 am

Author: Past & Present, 1907

Captain Edward McAllister, deceased, was one of the honored veterans of the 
Civil war and a prominent representative of the farming interests of Will 
county. Widely known and highly respected, he commanded the confidence and 
trust of all with whom he came in contact and he left the impress of his 
individuality not only upon the agricultural development of his locality but 
also upon political service and the work of different military organizations. 
Captain McAllister was born in Salem, New York, December 24, 1828, in the 
house which had been built by his grandfather in 1785. He was descended from 
Scotch ancestry, the family having been founded in America by three brothers 
of the name who came from Scotland, one settling in New York another in 
Philadelphia and a third in Pelham, Massachusetts. The last mentioned was the 
Hon. Hamilton McAllister, who removed to Salem New York, in 1760, when all of 
Washington county was a wilderness and the surrounding country was sparsely 
settled. The nearest mill was at Albany, forty-five miles distant, and on more 
than one occasion his wife Sarah rode on horseback to the mill with a sack of 
wheat, returning with the Hour. Hamilton McAllister was the first 
representative ever elected from Washington county to the state legislature. 
In those days the men were obliged to pay their own expenses and it was his 
custom to take with him to Albany enough butter to pay his board. He was one 
of the first sheriffs of Washington county and his political allegiance was 
given to the whig party. William McAllister, the youngest son of Hamilton 
McAllister was born in Salem, New York, and while engaged in lumbering he 
accidentally injured his foot, so that he was unable to join his two brothers 
in their service as soldiers in the war of 1812. He assisted in clearing the 
home place, which was covered with a growth of pine trees and from the stumps 
he built a fence which is still seen upon the farm. In his later years he 
purchased the interest of the other heirs in the old homestead property and 
thereon he spent his remaining days, greatly improving the farm by the care 
and labor which he bestowed upon it. His political support was given to the 
democracy and he was a stanch advocate of the Scotch Presbyterian faith and 
for many years served as a trustee in his church. When General Burgoyne passed 
through on his way to Bennington he used that church edifice as a barracks and 
afterward burned it. On two other occasions the church was burned to the 
ground and each time the McAllisters assisted liberally in rebuilding. In 
early manhood William McAllister was united in marriage to Miss Hannah 
Shoudler, a daughter of Andrew Shoudler, a representative of one of the old 
Holland families of New York, while her mother was of English lineage. Five 
children born of this union reached adult age, namely: Archibald, now 
deceased, who was for years a successful farmer of Will county and spent his 
last days in Chicago; William K., who was a judge on the supreme bench of 
Illinois from 1870 until 1873 and later was judge of the circuit court of Cook 
county, while at the time of his death he was serving on the appellate bench; 
Mrs. Catherine Walker, a resident of Salem, New York; Edward, of this review; 
and Jesse; who engaged in the wool and commission business in Chicago and was 
killed in a collision on the Panhandle Railroad. Captain McAllister in his 
youth was a student in the Washington Academy at Salem, which institution his 
grandfather had helped to build and support. His favorite recreation in 
boyhood was hunting and he became an expert shot. When twenty-four years of 
age he arrived in Illinois to become identified with the farming interests of 
Will county and purchased one hundred and sixty acres of raw prairie land in 
Plainfield township. Not a furrow had been turned or an improvement made on 
the property but he resolutely undertook the task of bringing it under 
cultivation and in the course of years he placed eleven miles of tiling on it, 
making the entire farm tillable. At one time he was extensively engaged in 
raising hogs and for a long period he made dairying one of the special 
branches of his business. For about ten years twenty-five hundred pounds of 
butter were made on his place each year, for which he received twenty-five 
cents per pound. Prior to 1899 he not only managed the place but did much of 
the active work himself. After that time his attention was merely given to the 
superintendence of the work. On the 4th of June, 1860, Captain McAllister was 
joined in wedlock to Miss Fannie Beebe and they became the parents of two sons 
and three daughters but the eldest son died at the age of six years. The 
others are: Carrie, now the wife of Edward R. McClelland, of Plainfield 
township; Ada, the wife of Dr. Evans, of Spring Valley; Jessie, who was a 
teacher in this county and is now the wife of Fred Foss; and Clyde, who has 
charge of the home farm. He is engaged in buying, feeding and raising cattle 
and hogs. At the opening of the Civil war Captain McAllister was among the 
first to offer his services to the Union. In 1856 he had assisted in 
organizing the militia here which was known as the Plainfield Artillery, and 
he was the first man in this part of the country to enlist in the Civil war. 
April 19, 1861, his name was enrolled for service. He was elected captain of 
artillery and commanded the best battery of artillery in the Army of the 
Tennessee. His company enlisted for three months. At the end of that time he 
organized a company for three years' service. He proceeded first to Cairo. In 
September he was sent to Fort Holt, Kentucky, which at that time was the 
lowest Union fort on the river. In February, 1862, he joined the Army of the 
Tennessee. His was the first battery to enter Fort Henry, and Captain 
McAllister was put in command of the fort. From there he was ordered to Fort 
Donelson, where his was the first shot fired by the Army of the Tennessee, 
Saturday morning, February 15, 1862. Finding that the enemy were preparing to 
break through the lines he opened on them with one of his guns without orders, 
thus waking all the troops around him, and this, the first gun fired in the 
battle, was the notification to the entire army of the opening of that 
memorable engagement. His own guns being disabled, he was ordered to select 
what he wanted from the forty-eight captured from the enemy. As his ammunition 
did not fit them he objected to their use, and finally secured an order to go 
to General Sherman at Paducah and get a new outfit of brass guns. At the 
battle of Shiloh he had this new and superior outfit. Having erected his 
battery at the edge of a clearing across which he fought and silenced 
Stanford's Mississippi battery, he afterward noticed a column of infantry, the 
Fourth Tennessee, in columns of fours, approaching along a road. He sent three 
cannon to the rear and placed the fourth in the road, then opened on the enemy 
with eannister, killing thirty-one and wounding one hundred and sixty men 
according to the Confederate reports of the war. The execution of this one 
gun, served by nine good men, was probably the most severe on record in the 
war of the Rebellion. Captain McAllister helped to train the gun and only beat 
a hasty retreat when the enemy was within thirty paces. The nine brave men 
escaped by the enemy firing at the support of the battery, consisting of the 
Fourteenth Illinois, Twenty-fifth Indiana and Thirteenth Iowa Infantries, 
which lost one hundred men by the one volley fired by the enemy. Captain 
McAllister was for years ignorant of the real facts of the fight, until 
revealed to him by old comrades and Confederate soldiers. His gallant service 
in that engagement was the means of defeating a crack battery that had never 
before met with defeat. On the last day of the battle, Byrne's battery and two 
guns of the Washington artillery of New Orleans (the crack battery of the 
Confederacy), were ordered to dislodge a battery on an eminence that had 
stopped the advance of the entire army. Captain McAllister and James A. 
Borland, of Joliet, were riding at the front preparing to fire at the battery, 
when a shot killed their horses and General Sherman's horse, which was tied to 
a sapling. They secured good locations behind a rise in the ground, and 
carefully biding their time, were able soon to silence and dislodge the 
battery. Soon after the battle, owing to sickness, the Captain resigned his 
commission and returned home. In 1894, during a meeting of an association 
formed to make a national park out of the Shiloh battleground. Captain 
McAllister met on a boat one of the members of the Fourth Tennessee Infantry, 
Thomas M. Page, of St. Louis, who told him that his one gun killed and wounded 
one hundred and ninety-one men in seven minutes, and he gave the captain great 
credit for the defense he had made. He stated that he was willing to erect a 
two thousand dollar monument on the battleground. Later the government planned 
to build one at a cost of seven hundred and fifty dollars. The government has 
also appropriated two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for the purpose 
of making a national park of the battlefield, and Captain McAllister was asked 
to select four pieces to mark such spots as he desired. He made four trips to 
Shiloh to attend meetings of Federals and Confederates. He was a member of the 
Loyal Legion and Bartleson post, G. A. R., of Joliet. also the Society of the 
Army of the Tennessee. He likewise belonged to Plainfield lodge, No. 536, A. 
F. & A. M. His death occurred August 25, 1900, and was a matter of keen regret 
to many friends who had known and honored him. His life was characterized by 
many good qualities and in citizenship he was always as true and loyal to his 
country in days of peace as when he followed the old flag on southern 
battlefields. He responded to the last roll call and went to join the host of 
the old soldiers who, life's battles over, have been called to the home 
beyond. 

Additional Comments:
Past and Present of Will County, Illinois, by W. W. Stevens, President of the 
Will County Pioneers Association. Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing 
Company, 1907.

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