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Elias Moon

 Elias Moon was born in Clinton County, Ohio in 1837.  On September 30, 1861, answering President Lincoln's call for volunteers, he left his home in Maysville, Iowa and enlisted in Company E of the 12th Iowa Volunteer Infantry.  He was 24 years old, unmarried, 5 feet 4 inches tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.  As part of Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee, he fought in the Battle of Fort Donnelson on February 11-16, 1862, and at the battle of Shiloh on April 6, 1862.  At Shiloh, the 12th Iowa formed part of the defense of the famed "Hornet's Nest."  As the rest of Grant's army fled, these ten regiments at the center of the Union line held the Confederate Army at bay for six hours, saving the larger force from being driven into the Tennessee River. Refusing to retreat, the 12th Iowa was eventually surrounded, forced to surrender, and Elias Moon became a Prisoner of War.

 The survivors of the 12th Iowa were transported to Memphis, TN, then to Montgomery, AL, where they were interned in a tobacco warehouse for two months. From Montgomery, they were packed in boxcars and moved by rail to a prison in Macon, GA. On the way to Macon, the train stopped in Atlanta for three days.  While in a boxcar in Atlanta, on June 13, 1862, Elias Moon died of wounds received at Shiloh.   He was 25 years old.