DeVoin Stilman01

 

WAUPACA COUNTY POST

October 6, 1921

 

LEFT FOR WAR SIXTY YEARS AGO TUESDAY

S.F. DEVOIN, CIVIL WAR VETERAN AND WAUPACA PIONEER,

VISITS CITY ON RETURN FROM G.A.R. MEET

 

            Tuesday afternoon we were favored by a visit of Stilman F. DeVoin of Los Angeles, California, who attended the National G.A.R. convention at Indianapolis, Ind., and came for a visit with old friends and relatives in Waupaca.

            This veteran was a member of the old Eighth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry regiment composed of full 1600 men, the widely celebrated regiment known as the Eagle regiment, having as a mascot the war eagle “Old Abe” that accompanied this aggregation of sturdy volunteers for three years through hell fire and brimstone.

            Of the 1600 of the Old Eighth, the subject of this sketch was the only one to register at the national reunion last week and he came over two thousand miles to meet the old comrades in arms once more.

            Mr. DeVoin came to Waupaca in 1854 when he was a lad of thirteen and went with his parents to make a homestead west of Rural in the then unnamed township of Belmont.  The next year when a lad of fourteen he and a comrade of his youth, John Chamberlain, and a nephew of the late William J. Chamberlain of Rural and later Waupaca, went together with oxen to haul together the logs to make the first school house in that newly settled neighborhood.  That was the year when his parents subscribed for the Waupaca Spirit, then printed at Rural, the printing outfit having been moved in a two-wheel ox cart from Waupaca early that spring because Rural was the center of population of all the settlement of the Indian Land as all the section west of Wolf River was then called.  The Waupaca Spirit was started January 1, 1853, and was the first paper printed in the territory known as the Indian Land and has been published every week since that time, having been changed in name to Waupaca Republican, the Republican-Post and Waupaca County Post.

            This veteran of the Civil War has been a veteran subscriber to the home paper having been a constant reader since his parents subscribed for The Spirit in 1854.

            When the war broke out and a volunteer company was formed in Waupaca, our informant was one of the “boys” who were loaded into a lumber wagon October 4, 1861, and “hauled” to Gills Landing to take the boat for Oshkosh.  “That was just sixty years ago today” exclaimed the only survivor of that group of sturdy patriots who left Waupaca that day in response to the call of the president for seventy-five thousand troops and responded in song that stirred the emotions of many an assembled throng as they answered with the confidence of youth, “We’re coming, Father Abraham, a hundred thousand strong.”

            Many others besides comrades were mentioned by this man of iron who at the age of eighty is as agile as a boy.  He called by phone to his friend, P.K. Hayward, of Royalton, beside whom he had stood when Preston came within an inch of death when a bullet hit and split his nose.  While he stood in the office of the County Post in walked Thomas Swan with whom Mr. DeVoin had run horses on the way to the circus and Swan’s wagon wheel hit a stump in the road and overturned it burying beneath the wagon box a bevy of young women of whom Mrs. M.T. Allen of this city was one.  The young women were not seriously hurt but Swan sustained a broken wrist which still is not a match of the other.  He showed his grit by taking the dozen young women to the circus and kept from swooning by pouring lemonade on the swollen member.

            Mr. DeVoin was a guest at the homes of Homer and Frank Carpenter of this city, these two gentlemen being brothers of the late Mrs. DeVoin, who passed away February 26, 1921, after an illness of four years.

            Another friend of the visitor is A.M. Penney who on meeting this old acquaintance of former days insisted that he come to the show and bring as many soldier comrades as he could muster on a night raid on the movies.  Mr. DeVoin explained that in the days of the Farmers Grange he had been the head of the Belmont organization and Mr. Penney of the organization of the neighboring town.

            Mr. DeVoin later came to Waupaca to conduct the hotel on the west side of Main street previously known as the Lewis House and for a time operated by the late N. Raymond.  It was while Mr. DeVoin owned the hotel that it was destroyed by fire, this being one of the last wooden buildings to be wiped out in the block in which the post office is now located.

            From Waupaca the subject of our sketch moved to Rhinelander where in company with his brother, John DeVoin, he conducted a lumber business under the firm name of DeVoin and Company.  Selling out to Brown Brothers who still operate lumber interests in that city and vicinity, Mr. DeVoin went to Los Angeles, a city of 40,000, about like Oshkosh today, and in thirty-three years has seen it grow to a city of 700,000 and become a mecca for both summer and winter tourists and for those who are in quest of a congenial climate amide an abundance of all kinds of flowers and semi-tropical fruits.

            Another veteran that has survived the storms of many winters since they were young men together was Wm. R. Moon of Veterans’ Home.

 

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planned to visit a nephew, Dr. John Carpenter.

            While in the city Tuesday afternoon Messrs. DeVoin and Swan paid a visit to E.L. Browne and reported that they had a pleasant hour recounting the incidents of early days in Waupaca.