Will County IL Archives Biographies.....McAllister, Capt Edward ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/il/ilfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com September 7, 2007, 9:04 pm Author: Genealogical & Biographical Record CAPT. EDWARD McALLISTER. As the name indicates, the McAllister family is of Scotch origin. The first to seek a home in America were three brothers, one of whom settled in New York, another in Philadelphia, and the third in Pelham, Mass. The latter, Hon. Hamilton McAllister, moved to Salem, N. Y., 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 thither his wife, Sarah, rode on horseback with a sack of wheat, returning home with the flour. He was the first representative ever elected from Washington County to the state legislature. In those days the members 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. In political views he was a Whig. The youngest son of Hamilton McAllister was William, who was born in Salem in a house that had been built on the home place in 1785. While engaged in lumbering he accidentally split his foot with an axe, inflicting an injury so serious that he was unable to serve in the war of 1812. However, two of his brothers represented the family in the army. He assisted in clearing the home place, which was covered with pine; the stumps of these he pulled and with them built a fence that remains to this day. Buying the interest of the other heirs in the homestead, he spent his remaining years thereon, meantime taking great pains to place the land under cultivation. In politics he voted with the Democrats. He was a strict supporter of Scotch Presbyterian doctrines and for many years served as trustee of his church. When General Burgoyne passed through on his way to Bennington he used the church building as a barracks and afterward burned it; on two other occasions the church was burned to the ground, but each time the McAllisters assisted liberally in rebuilding. One of the brothers of William McAllister was John, who in young manhood started for the west. Going down the Ohio River in a flatboat, he proceeded up the Mississippi and the Illinois and in 1819 settled in Jersey County. The marriage of William McAllister united him with Hannah Shoudler, whose father, Andrew, was a descendant of an old Holland family of New York, while her mother was of English lineage. Five children were born to their marriage who attained mature years, namely: Archibald, deceased, who was for years a successful farmer of this county, but whose last days were spent in Chicago; William K., who was a judge on the supreme bench of Illinois from 1870 to 1873, later was judge of the circuit court of Cook County, and at the time of his death held office as judge of the appellate court; Mrs. Catherine Walker, who resides in Salem, N. Y.; Edward; and Jesse, who engaged in the wool and commission business in Chicago, but was killed in a collision on the Panhandle Railroad. In the house built by his grandfather in 1785, the subject of this article was born December 24, 1828. His education was largely acquired in Washington Academy at Salem, an 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 came to Illinois and bought one hundred and sixty acres in Plainfield Township, Will County, where he now resides. It was raw prairie land, without any buildings or fences. Borrowing the money to make the first payment, he began to improve the place. He has put in eleven miles of tiling, so that every foot of ground is tillable. At one time he was heavily engaged in raising hogs, but owing to the cholera scourge he dropped the business. One of his specialties has been dairying. For about ten years twenty-five hundred pounds of butter were made on his place each year, for which he was paid twenty-five cents a pound. Prior to 1899 he not only managed the place, but did much of the active work himself, but recently, owing to heart trouble, he has confined his attention to superintending the work of others. Since the organization of the party he has been a Republican, and for years has been the head of the party delegation in his township, but has held no office except that of supervisor in 1885. June 4, 1860, Captain McAllister married Fannie Beebe, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. The oldest son died when six years of age. Carrie is the wife of Edward R. McClelland, of Plainfield Township; Ada married Dr. Evans, of Spring Valley; Jessie was a teacher in this county and is the wife of Fred Foss, youngest son of L. T. Foss, an old settler of Plainfield Township; and Clyde assists his father in the management of the farm. 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, Ky., 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 canister, 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 battle ground, 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 $2,000 monument on the battle ground. Later the government planned to build one at a cost of $750. The government has also appropriated $225,000 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 has made four trips to Shiloh to attend meetings of Federals and Confederates. He is a member of the Loyal Legion, and Bartleson Post, G. A. R., of Joliet, also the Society of the Army of the Tennessee. Fraternally he is connected with Plainfield Lodge No. 536, A. F. & A. M. Additional Comments: Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County Illinois Containing Biographies of Well Known Citizens of the Past and Present, Biographical Publishing Company, Chicago, 1900 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/il/will/bios/mcallist949gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/ilfiles/ File size: 10.1 Kb