62nd Ohio Infantry Regiment

Frances Bates Pond

During the American Civil War the state of Ohio was to raise over 260 regiments of infantry/cavalry/artillery for the Union cause -  that's just over 300,000 men!

The 62nd Ohio Infantry Regiment was originally mustered and organised in Zanesville, McConnellsville, and Somerton, Ohio, beginning September 17, 1861, and officially joined the army for a term of three years service on December 24, 1861, under the command of Colonel Francis Bates Pond (that's him to the left). 

 

The 62nd remained at Camp Goddard until January 17, 1862, when the regiment was given orders to to travel to Cumberland, Maryland. 

The 62nd travelled the 200 odd miles via the Ohio Central Railroad and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and on February 3, the regiment moved further east (again on the Baltimore and Ohio) to Great Cacapon Creek, Virginia. 

On March 10, the 62nd marched to Strasburg, Virginia via Martinsburg and Winchester, and returned to Winchester the following day. 

Map courtesy Wikipedia

On March 22, the regiment was on picket duty near Winchester, but when the battle broke out the next day they were ordered to the battlefield, where it was originally posted to a position on the left of the Union line as part of Sullivan's brigade, along with the 13th Indiana and the 39th Illinois. It would appear that there baptism of fire was not a bloody one, there main role was to face off the Confederate feint on that flank under Ashby

The day after the battle, the 62nd advanced with the rest of the Union army three miles past Strasburg. On March 25, the regiment marched to Mount Jackson, where it engaged in a skirmish with the Confederates. 

The regiment went on to serve with distinction through the Seven Days Battles, the Battle of Fort Wagner, the Siege of Charleston, the Siege of Petersburg, the Battle of Chaffin's Farm and the Appomattox Campaign.

About Sept. 1, 1865, it was consolidated with the 67th Ohio, and became the 67th

The regiment lost a total of 244 men during service; 11 officers and 102 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, 2 officers and 129 enlisted men died of disease.

...and what of  Francis Bates Pond? 

Pond was born in 1825, at Ellisburg, Jefferson County, New York. He entered Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1841, and graduated with honours in 1846. He spent the next three years in Kent, Ohio, one year as a teacher and two as a book-keeper for Charles and Marvin Kent. In 1850 he went to Harmar, Ohio and taught classics at the Harmar Academy. He began studying the law in 1849 in Cleveland, and continued in Marietta in 1850. He was admitted to the bar 1852 at Malta, Ohio, and three years later elected Prosecuting Attorney of Morgan County, Ohio. During the Civil War, at the Battle of Deep Bottom (siege of Petersburg), he was wounded, and lost sight in his left eye. He resigned in November of that year (1864).

In 1867, he was elected to represent Morgan County in the Ohio House of Representatives for the Fifty-eighth General Assembly. In 1869 and 1871 he won election as Ohio Attorney General. He was Ohio Attorney General from 1870 to 1874, and in 1879 he was elected to the Ohio Senate from the Fourteenth district (Washington, Morgan and part of Noble County), for the Sixty-fourth General Assembly, and re-elected to the Sixty-fifth in 1881. A number of sources also show him as a general in the army, so a successful man by all accounts.

Married three times, he died aged 63 on November 2, 1888, at his home in Malta, Ohio as a result of the wound he received near his eye in the Civil War which he had suffered with for nineteen years (!)

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/62nd_Ohio_Infantry_Regiment
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bates_Pond
• https://www.ohiocivilwarcentral.com/entry.php?rec=617 - exhaustive! 
• https://www.battlefields.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/first-kernstown-battlemap-3-4-2008.pdf - map source