Benjamin Franklin Reno

One of 6 brothers (2 sisters), he went from Pennsylvania to Chicago, IL about 1848 and was in the coal business there in 1851, probably with his oldest brother Charles Augustus (1817-1902) in Reno & Little. He was then a civil engineer on the the Dixon Air Line and Lyons Iowa Central Railroads. In 1860 he was a 29 year old clerk living with his parents and sister Julia in Iowa City, IA.

He organized a company of men there and was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant of Company H, 2nd Iowa Cavalry on 5 September 1861. He was promoted to First Lieutenant on 28 September and joined his brother Jesse Lee as a volunteer aide-de-camp by the end of 1861. He was with him on the North Carolina and 2nd Manassas campaigns of 1862.

He was with the General on the Maryland Campaign and, after Jesse was shot at Fox's Gap on 14 September, accompanied his body to Baltimore for embalming and on to Boston for his funeral on 19 September.

He was commissioned Captain and Assistant Quartermaster, US Volunteers on 17 November 1862 and remained with General Burnside and the Ninth Corps til after Frederickburg in December, and was then ordered West to General Grant's staff. He was with Grant to Vicksburg in July 1863, at stations in Eastport, TN and Louisville, KY, then from late 1863 into early 1864 in charge of building barracks in Chicago and nearby. He was sent to Rock Island, IL in March 1864 and to Fort Gaines near New Orleans in December. He resigned his commission on 15 March 1865.

He settled in in Marengo, IA in 1870 and was a grocer there to at least 1888. He was also a justice of the peace there in 1885. In 1900 he was a billing clerk living alone in a boarding house in Marengo and he began receiving a disability pension from his US service in February 1907. He was probably living with his son Quimby in Mount Vernon, WA at his death in 1908.

His service basics from Heitman.1 His role on South Mountain and after from John David Hoptak in 'Hallo Sam. I'm Dead' in the Civil War Times (December 2013). Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1900, the Iowa State Census of 1885, and a bio sketch in Union Historical's History of Iowa County (1881). His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Mary J Vosburgh (1839-1893) in Buffalo, NY June 1866 and they had 6 children. He married again, Carolyn H (-1919).

10/09/1830; Venango County, PA

08/24/1908; Skagit County, WA; burial in IOOF Cemetery, Marengo, IA