OR Jacksonville, Oregon veteran bio sketch #6

John Winn

Lt. Colonel
Joined
Mar 13, 2014
Location
State of Jefferson
I thought I was done but, by request, here's one more.


John Baptiste Renault
Co A 100th New York Infantry

b. 6-24-1842 Pointe-Claire district, Montreal, Canada
note that his death certificate give his birth date as June 26 but John himself said June 24
d. 11-3-1922 Medford, Oregon


John enlisted at Troy, New York on October 12, 1864 as a private for a one year tour as a substitute for a man named James H. Boise. I could not trace James Boise as there is nothing in the records except for the name.

At the time of his enlistment John had been living in Crown Point, New York, a small town near Lake Champlain about 120 miles south of Montreal. Because he couldn’t speak English, and the person who enlisted him couldn’t speak French, his name was incorrectly recorded as Eugene Sovan. On his pension application he said “the boys all called me Frenchy.”

He was described as 21 years old, 5 ft 6 ½ inches tall, fair complected, with grey eyes and brown hair, occupation general laborer. He was present with his company until March 30, 1865 when, at Hatcher’s Station, Virginia, he was shot just above the right knee, the bullet glancing the bone and exiting behind the knee. He was eventually hospitalized at Fort Monroe, Virginia and was discharged there July 7, 1865.

During John’s tour his regiment saw combat at Darbytown Road and Fair Oaks, Virginia, and in the trenches outside Richmond, Virginia in the Petersburg campaign.

He received an invalid’s pension in 1902 for rheumatism he developed as a result of his wound which rendered him unable to do any real manual labor. In 1922 he was receiving $72 per month ($1,030 in 2016 dollars). In his pension file there is a letter from the first sergeant of his company testifying that John was the same man as Eugene and the man says he posed questions to John as to how many deserters were executed and John knew the correct answer and also provided the “farther fact that one was not killed at the first fire, but that one was selected from the firing squad to make complete the sentence of the court” so it seems John at least witnessed a number of executions (the company was usually formed to witness them) and might have actually been in one of the squads. His pension application was witnessed by Frank Kasshafer and Owen Keegan, two other Civil War veterans buried in Jacksonville.

John was an active G.A.R. member and was elected “Lieutenant Colonel” of the Chester A. Arthur post (#47, Medford).

After the war John went to Massachusetts for a short time to visit his brother, Noel, but in August 1865 he left for Virginia City, Montana where he began mining. He did not say how he got there or how long it took but as it was before the transcontinental railroad it must have been quite a journey, especially for a man with a recent leg wound. In the fall of 1869 he moved to Deer Lodge, Montana, then to the North Fork, Salmon River, Idaho in June 1872, then back to Montana in August 1876 where he lived in Garnet until 1892. He discovered the lode for the Emery gold mine near Deer Lodge in 1888 and was one of the first to mine the Zosel district there. He was naturalized in Deer Lodge September 30, 1892.

He then moved to Baker, Oregon, where he lived until 1899 when he moved back to Garnet. In February 1902 he moved to Jacksonville, Oregon, likely because he could no longer mine due to his disability and because his nephew, John Baptiste Renault Jr., lived there. In Jacksonville John was the gardener and handyman for Cornelius Beekman, well-known Jacksonville banker, for sixteen years.

In 1921 he developed prostate cancer and in July of that year had bladder surgery in Portland. This left him totally disabled and in need of an attendant. He was in Sacred Heart Hospital in Medford from May 1922 until his death in November. His physician was Dr. James W. Robinson, a well-known man who is buried in an elaborate family plot in Jacksonville.

Whoever wrote his obituary for the Mail Tribune was rather creative. It said that John enlisted in 1860, was wounded five times “a piece of bomb shell lodging in the back of his head and a bayonet pierced his lip, while his right leg was broken in two places.” It also said he had been a miner and “was widely known in Montana, Alaska, Oregon and Nevada” and had moved to Jacksonville in 1897. We know from John’s own hand that he enlisted in 1864, was wounded in the knee without a fracture, never lived in Alaska or Nevada, and moved to Jacksonville in 1902. Maybe it was a particularly boring, slow day in the obituary department.

John is found on the 1910 census, born about 1842 in Canada, single, living in Jacksonville, Oregon, occupation gardener, immigrated in 1861.
He is found on the 1920 census, born about 1843 in Canada, living in Jacksonville, occupation general laborer, immigrated in 1860.

John never married.

Sources:

Jackson County Genealogy Library
death certificate 232

Southern Oregon Historical Society
Medford Mail Tribune obituary: vertical file biographies MI 188013

Montana Department of Environmental Quality
Abandoned Mines, Emery District

Ancestry.com
Naturalization record.

The Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, Montana) January 28, 1900 p 18

National Archives
compiled service record
pension file

G.A.R. records
 
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