Tuesday, March 9, 2010

William Norton & Amos Norton


Mr. William S. Norton was born in Edgar County, Illinois, July 26, 1844. His father was Amos Norton. At the age of seventeen, about the time the war broke out in 1861, he left school to enlist in Company A of the Independent Mounted Rangers, and his first service with this organization was to act as a bodyguard to the governor of the State of Missouri. Later his company was organized in the Fourteenth Missouri Cavalry, and later he veteranized and became a part of the Eighth Missouri Cavalry. With these different organizations Mr. Norton spent more than four years following the flag of the Union and was mustered out at Little Rock, Arkansas, in September, 1865, under order No. 171.

While the great theatre of the war was east of the Mississippi, it is certain that no service was attended with greater hardships and more constant danger than came to those who followed the Union flag in the southwestern country of Missouri, Arkansas and the Indian Territory. Mr. Norton was at the Battle of Carthage, July 5, 1861; at the decisive engagement of Wilson Creek, at Pea Ridge, Prairie Grove, Helena and Poison Springs, Arkansas, and in a number of other minor battles of the campaign in those two states. For ninety-three days and nights he and his comrades were under fire at Four Corners, Arkansas, a point where the states and territories of Arkansas, Missouri, Indian Territory and Kansas adjoin. This engagement followed the Battle of Pea Ridge. During a charge of cavalry at Springfield, Missouri, he was slightly wounded by a saber cut.

Amos Norton, a native of Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he was born in 1826. He arrived in Kansas in 1854 at Fort Scott. He homesteaded a claim there. After working his land for two years, he removed to Buffalo, Dallas County, in Southwestern Missouri. In that rough and rugged district of Missouri he spent his summers in farming and followed the carpenter trade in the winter months. When the war broke out Amos Norton quickly showed his stand for the Union cause. He lived in a part of Missouri where Union sentiment could not be spoken without the hazard of personal danger, but in spite of that he enlisted in February, 1862, in Company B of the Fourteenth Missouri Cavalry. He was elected lieutenant of his company and was soon afterward appointed quartermaster. He was mustered out of this organization in February, 1863, and was soon afterward appointed colonel of the Eleventh Missouri Cavalry. On April 2, 1863, he was captured by a band of guerillas headed by John Turner, and as nothing further of his fate was ever learned it is probable that he was put to death by his captors in Southwest Missouri.

This is just a part of William S. Norton biography, those whishing to read his full biography can do so by taking this link. http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1918ks/bion/nortonws.html

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