Norman
D. Knight
(1839-1923)
Norman
D. Knight was born in
Turkeyfoot Twp.,
Somerset County, PA on
March 14, 1839, the son of James and Susanna (Imel)
Knight Jr. He and his brother Daniel
were soldiers in the Civil War and later, he and his wife Sarah were pioneer settlers
of Kansas.
After his mother's death when Norman was a boy, he moved with his father and siblings to Marshfield, Athens County, OH. His father later remarried. Herman Walker, a neighbor in Athens County for two years before the war, said Norman was "sound and healthy all the time."
After the Civil War broke out the Civil War, Norman went to Mason City, WV to enlist in the Army -- Company D, 4th WV Volunteer Infantry -- on June 27, 1861. Just a few months later, on Sept. 24, 1861 near Raleigh Court House, VA, he contracted rheumatism after "waiding in the Coal River." Wrote eyewitness Joshua R. King:
[We] went to Raleigh Court House on a raid, was gone 13 days and we forded Cole River from 20 to 25 times and part of the time we had nothing to eat and Knight got sick. I don't remember what the deseas was and as he was not able to do duty as a soldier he was put in the band to play the fife... I was with him all this time and we slept together some of the time. He never was stout after this and was sickly to the end of the service.
Fellow soldier John McGlaughlin observed that Norman had "pain and aching in left hip, left leg and left arm, pain and heaviness in stomach with spitting up of food after eating, fluttering and thumping in region of heart from which cause he was exempt from duty."
Treated at a hospital at Charleston, WV and Gallipolis, OH, he was later transferred to the regiment's musical band as a fife player. On Jan. 20, 1864, he was discharged at Larkinsville, AL, and re-enlisted the next day in Co. B of the 2nd WV Veteran Volunteers. He and the regiment ultimately went to Vicksburg, MS, Youngs Point, LA; and Milikens Bend, LA. Later, they returned north to Cumberland, MD in early January 1865.
Battle action during the siege of Vicksburg, from a painting by Alonzo Chappel
Norman's brother, Daniel Harry Knight, served in the 92nd OH Volunteer Infantry. They remained close over the years, even though Daniel settled far away in Michigan.
Seen
here are Norman and Sarah, seated, and Daniel and his wife Caroline
(Lewellyn) Knight.
In April 1864, Norman returned home from the Army on furlough. Among others, he is known to have visited with his father and stepmother, and with his sister Catherine and her husband William Younkin. Of that visit, William Younkin wrote: "He was thin, afflicted with Rheumatism also indigestion. He continued lame most of the time while at home about 30 days."
At the close of the war, Norman stood Honor Inspection for President Lincoln in Washington, DC. Discharged on July 16, 1865 at Clarksburg, WV, he returned home. His and brother Daniel's Civil War records are summarized in the 1989 booklet, Civil War Veterans of Athens County, Ohio, authored by Mary L. Bowman and published by the Athens County Historical Society & Museum. The work can be found today in the at the Alden Library at Ohio University in Athens.
His health was so poor that brother in law Younkin wrote: "He was then in general bad health, not able to perform farm labor, he being a farmer. He was quite lame most of the time and spit up nearly every thing he ate, complained of fluttering and thumping in left side near the heart, causing dizziness..."
Of Norman's broken health, stepmother Hannah Knight wrote that he "complaned of a great weight and heaviness in stomach, also attack of heart disease causeing him to fall as if in a faint. These afflictions were continuous during all the time I knew [him] after his being discharged in 1865."
The
following year, on Sept. 5, 1866, Norman married Sarah Elizabeth
Baughman, daughter of Joseph and Emily (Jones) Baughman. Rev. E.A. Brooks, a
Minister of the Gospel, performed the ceremony at Athens County. Their marriage
license is seen at left.
He was treated in Marshfield by Dr. Pickett. "Not haveing received any benefit," Norman later wrote, "my physician advised me to go to North west Illinois."
A month after marriage, on about Oct. 1, 1866, Norman and Sarah and the Younkins moved to Illinois, settling in Morrison, Whiteside County. Norman apparently never saw his step-mother, and possibly his father, again.
The Knights had five children -- Harry Grant Knight, Katie L. Knight, Lena Alice Knight, Daniel Horace Knight and Nellie E. Ambler. Sadly, two of their daughters -- Katie (age 11) and Lena (age 16 months) both died in March 1884, victims of a smallpox epidemic. They also lost an infant son in 1887.
Norman and his sister Catherine were both in poor health. After making the move, Norman's health "somewhat improved," recalled brother in law Younkin, and "he was able to perform the duties of a farmer about 2/3 of the time." While in Morrison, the Knights and Younkins worked together and resided in the same house. Sadly, though, it's believed that Catherine Younkin died shortly after the move. On about Nov. 1, 1867, widower William Younkin left and returned to Ohio.
"Under climatic influence and domestic treatment I obtained temporary relief [in Illinois]," Norman wrote. "Haveing lost all confidence in medical men I then conceived the idea of moveing to Kansas hopeing to obtain relief by climatic change."
In February 1871, amid the dead of winter, and after four years in Illinois, the Knights moved further west. Along with Sarah's brother Hiram Baughman, also a Civil War veteran, and friend John Gorgas, they traveled in a wagon train to Kansas. (Hiram is said to have met his wife on the trip.) Giving a sense of the opportunity for farmers in Kansas at that time, the Baughman in-laws are known to have farmed about 640 acres in wheat at their new locale.
A rare old, colorized postcard of Burrton's unpaved North Main Street
The Knights and Baughmans, and Sarah's sister Phoebe (Baughman) Gander, settled in Burrton, Harvey County, KS, where they remained the rest of their lives.
Seen
at right are Sarah, right and sister Phoebe, in a portrait taken at a studio in Hutchinson,
Harvey County. Despite being so far
away, the Knights also remained close with Sarah's other sister, Lillie
(Baughman) Young in Ohio, coming back to visit often.
The move to Burrton did not solve Norman's physical suffering. Near neighbor David Kanselman, who met the Knights the year they moved there, wrote that Norman:
... would frequently put his hand on his heart, and act as if lightheaded, and a great deal bothered with the dispepsia. He has frequently been laid up for three and four weeks with the rheumatism so that he could not work a bit. There has been no change for the better in his condition since 1871, and if any, has been for the worse.
Family physician P.W. Easling of Burrton once said that Norman "is a temperate man and is not addicted to bad habits of any kind that I ever heard of."
Norman received a federal government pension in compensation for his wartime disabilities. The amount eventually increased to $25 per month. He underwent routine annual medical examinations, and in 1889, at age 49, he weighed 143 lbs. These detailed physicians' reports are still on file today in Norman's Civil War pension file in the National Archives.
Norman
and his brothers in law were active in Civil War veterans' activities and
encampments, traveling to many parts of the nation. They were
members of a musical band, with Norman on the fife, Hiram Baughman the drum and
Thomas Gander another instrument. With Hiram as the band leader, all the players
were family members in some way. The photo, seen here, was taken circa
1912 -- Norman is second from right with the fife, while Hiram is at far left with
the drum.
Sarah died at Burrton on Aug. 18, 1918. She was laid to rest in the Burrton Cemetery.
Norman outlived Sarah by five years. He wrote on a pension application that he "can not dress himself or attend to his needs and wants. He cannot put on his shoes, or other articles of clothing without assistance." During his last physical checkup, on June 27, 1923, his weight had fallen to 119 lbs. He complained bitterly of pain in the muscles of his arms and shoulders, as well as his back and lower limbs. Doctors noted that his "hands tremor so that [he] has no control of them. Some tremor of lower extremities but not so bad as the hands."
Norman died at age 84 on Oct. 31, 1923. He was buried beside Sarah.
Copyright
© 1994, 2000-2002, 2004-2006 Mark A. Miner.
Vicksburg battle sketch painted by Alonzo Chappel, and published in 1877 as a
steel engraving by Johnson & Miles, New York.