William Homer Beebe

From Platteville, he enlisted in Company F, 3rd Wisconsin Infantry on 21 April 1861. He was promoted to Corporal and Sergeant (dates not given).

He was wounded in action on 17 September 1862 at Antietam.

He mustered out of the 3rd Infantry at the expiration of his term of service on 1 July 1864. He received a commission as Captain, Company K, 44th Wisconsin Infantry to date from 18 February 1865. He served as the Acting Assistant Inspector General at Paducah, TN from 7 April to his mustering out with the 44th Infantry on 28 August 1865.

He became a lawyer and opened an office in Platteville. He was also an inventor, holding several patents. He was a Justice of the Peace, the third mayor of Platteville. He put up the "first telephone lines between Platteville and Lancaster (17 miles) in 1877, one year after Alexander Graham Bell completed his first long distance telephone line". He owned and operated the Grant County Telephone and Telegraph Company from 1878 to his death in 1910.

Basic information from Bryant1 and the State Roster2. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Quote above from an exhibit on the Beebe House from the Wisconsin Historical Society and details in an application to the National Register of Historic Places (for the Main Street Commercial District, Plattesville, 1990).

1841 in OH

03/05/1910; burial in Greenwood Cemetery, Platteville, WI