During the Civil War, nearly 320,000 Ohioans served in the U.S. military; of those, over 35,000 lost their lives. One Ohio soldier who gave his life to preserve the Union was Colwell Porter, a private in Company F of the 171st Ohio Voluntary Infantry. In 1999, the Ohio History Connection acquired Porter’s forage cap along with a letter that he wrote to his sister while in service.

Colwell Porter was born in 1844 and grew up on a farm near Newton Falls in Trumbull County, Ohio.  In May of 1864, at the age of nineteen, Porter joined the newly organized 171st OVI regiment, an Ohio National Guard unit, for one hundred days service.  After receiving military training in Sandusky, Ohio, Porter and his regiment were sent to nearby Johnson’s Island, a prisoner-of-war camp in Lake Erie, to guard captured Confederate soldiers. 

While stationed at Johnson’s Island, Porter wrote a letter to his younger sister, Edna, who lived in Newton Falls. In the letter, dated June 1, 1864, Porter described his life on guard duty as a “very easy time” and encouraged his sister to send him “some bread & ham & eggs” as a “little grub from home makes a change from beans, sowbelly & sour bread.”

Along with these details, he also recounted a recent failed prisoner escape attempt: "(T)here was quite an excitement in camp Sunday morning, the rebs had dug a hole about forty ft. under the fence, the hole was most of the way through the rock. The first reb had just stuck his head out as the officer [on] guard saw him."

Porter concluded the letter by noting that the “weather has been very pleasant” and added a final plea for his sister to “send a pound of tobacco.”

About a week after writing this letter, Porter and the 171st were sent to Kentucky to reenforce U.S. troops stationed near the town of Cynthiana.  On June 11th, while guarding a damaged railroad bridge scheduled for repair, Porter and his regiment were attacked by a Confederate cavalry unit led by General John Hunt Morgan.  After hours of heavy fighting, the 171st lost seventeen men and were forced to surrender.  

The following day, the captured members of the 171st were paroled and allowed to return to Ohio.  While most of the regiment resumed guard duty at Johnson’s Island, Porter, who may have been wounded during Morgan’s attack, was instead taken to the Soldiers’ Home in Cleveland, a hospital-like facility created to rehabilitate sick or injured soldiers.  There, on July 2nd, 1864, Porter died reportedly from disease.  He was later buried in his hometown of Newton Falls, Ohio.