| John Biddle | 101st Ohio Voluntary Infantry |
| by Chris Dages |
John Biddle, or John B. Biddle, is an ex-member of the Otterbein class of 1859. According to Ancestry.com he was born in 1838 in Crawford County, Ohio. Although I could not find him in any census of the area, there is a record of Biddle writing Governor David Tod from Oberlin in Lorain County on July 8, 1862. In the letter Biddle asked Governor Tod if he “still granted Lieutenant’s commissions to those desiring to get up a company” and if that were still the case, he could “raise a company in forty days.”[1] I could find nothing that would indicate that he did raise a company other than the fact that he was Second Lieutenant in his company.
On July 28, 1968, at the age of twenty-four, John Biddle volunteered his services to the United States Army and became apart of the one hundred and first Ohio Volunteer Infantry, company C. His regiment first saw their first heavy action on October 8, 1862, during their pursuit of Confederate General Braxton Bragg at the Battle of Perryville in Kentucky. The regiment was deployed with the Army of Ohio under the command of General Don Carlos Buell. Thought Biddle survived this engagement his next would be his last. Biddle fell at the Battle of Stone River, or Murfreesboro, while attempting to rally his men. Biddle’s actions on December 31, 1962 were mentioned in one commander’s field report along with the comment on how “the regiment has lost in them officers whose place cannot be filled, and the country patriots who served faithfully to the last.”[2] From that statement one could surmise that John Biddle was a brave leader, a type of man who led by example.
[1] "ohiohistory.org / Civil War Guide Project,"http://www.ohiohistory.org/onlinedoc/civilwar/sa0147/40_06.cfm, March, 2005.
[2] Philip Oliver, The Civil War CD-ROM: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Carmel, IN: Guild Press of Indiana, 2000).