Phares Witwer, born in Lancaster county, Pa., Feb. 16, 1839, was removed with his parents across the Allegheny mountains to Summit county, Ohio, in 1844, where he was raised and worked for his father until 1860, when he made a trip throught the west, and in Kosciusko county, Ind., he got acquainted with Sarah Rose. He boarded with Mr. Rose and family in Warsaw, while he worked at the carpenter trade. Mr. Rose and family moved to Iowa, and Phares followed, to Jasper county, Iowa, where they were married, December 23, 1860, and they moved to Ohio in 1861. They resided near the southeast corner of Summit county, Ohio, and on the 11th day of Aug. 1862, Phares enlisted at Massillon, Ohio, into Company E, of the 104th O. V. I., under Captain A. J. Baney; was mustered into service on August 24, 1862, at Camp Massilon, Ohio and was sent forthwith to the front. He served in the First Brigade, Third Division of the 23rd Army Corps. He wasin a few skirmishes, before the seige at Atlanta, Georgia, but his regiment did not go with Sherman to the sea, but was sent back into the Tennessee, under General Thomas, "The Rock of Chickamauga," as his men called him. After Sherman left them, they fought a hard battle at Franklin, on November 30, 1864, but with no great results. But Gen. Hood besieged Thomas at Nashville, Tenn. Thomas was slow to strike, but when he did strike it was with sledge hammer force, that he soon knocked the opposing forces all to pieces. This attack was made Dec. 15 and 16, 1864. It lasted two days, but at the end of the second day the miserable remnant, ragged, barefoot, wet to the skin by the incessant winter rains, shivering and starving, escaped as best they could, leaving their sick and wounded to die along the roadside. This ended the war in Tennessee, and here on the second days' fight, on Dec. 16, 1864, is where Phares Witwer was wounded. While he was discharging his gun a bullet entered his right arm at the wrist and plowed along the bone and came out back of the elbow and killed the man next behind him, as he was then in the front rank of his regiment. He was then sent to the hospital at Louisville, Kentucky, where he remained until the close of the war, when he rejoined his regiment at Goldsboro, North Carolina, where the regiment received orders to return to Cleveland, Ohio, to be mustered out, and Phare Witwer with the remaining veterans of their regiment received their honorable discharge, in the latter part of the month of June, 1865. Phares arrived home on July 2 and on July 4 I helped him, "I was a boy of 12 years old," to make his hand after the reaper in the harvest field binding wheat, on my father's and his brother's farm, in the southeast corner of Summit, county, Ohio.
I will never forget, his oldest son, and then only child, was running after him nearly all day being afraid that his papa would again go away and leave him, This was Eadon Ambrose Witwer, now of Onawa, Iowa. In the yeat 1866 he sold his little home in Summit county, Ohio, to my father, and he moved to Elkhart, Ind., where he resided and worked at the carpenter trade until 1869. In Aug. he bought a piece of land 80 acres, in Noble county, Ind., and he moved on this land, at Silver Lakes, near Wolf Lake, Ind. Here he raised until he died July 31, 1871. The doctors claiming the cause of his death to be from his bullet wound received in the army and the poison remaining in his blood.
He left the widow and five children in unavoidable circumstances, in that the home was not all paid for and that they did not realize much out of their home, was a circumstance which could not be helped. Phares Witwer was laid to rest in the cemetery just east of Wolf Lake Ind. The mother and children on Nov. 11, 1871, moved to Jasper Co., Iowa, where they resided until 1881, when they moved to Monona Co., Iowa, and have resided there ever since. This history was obtained by the assistance of the two letters, one from the only daughter, AlmedaEllen Witwer Croghan.This letter was written Dec. 16, 1886, at Missouri Valley, Iowa, and the second letter from one of the Sons, Samuel Edward Witwer, written on June 10, 1909, together with what I could remember, as I was at Uncle Phares' funeral. The history of the family will be noticed in the regular genealogical order. The mother married again to Mr. Shook. She is still living at Onawa, Iowa.
