Pvt. Horace Bliss

Horace Bliss, son of David & Leonora Pitkin Bliss was born on 31 Jan 1842 in Allegany County, New York. He died on 8 Mar 1897 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Horace was a farmer in Lincoln Township, Ringgold County, Iowa. He enlisted as a private September 17, 1861 at St. Joseph, Missouri in Company C Cavalry, attached to the 13th Missouri Volunteers, known as Berry's Battalion Cavalry. He was mustered out on January 31, 1862 and honorably discharged because of illness. Not long thereafter he went West and spent four years in the mines in Nevada and California. According to the recollections of his son, Ralph, he heard that California might cure his "ague" or malaria, with which he was afflicted during his short stint in the cavalry. He signed up with a wagon train that was organized in Missouri and drove an ox team over the Mormon trail through Nebraska and across southern Wyoming to Salt Lake City and then into Nevada and California. Like many of the adventurers who joined in the gold and silver rushes of the era, Mr. Bliss gained much experience but little wealth for his efforts. In a letter he wrote in 1865 from Austin, Nevada to his brother, William Henry Harrison Bliss in Iowa, he told of his experiences: "I shal stay here this summer and if times does not get better I shal leave if I sell for any thing worth while I will come home if not I will go to some new mining country. I do not feel like giving up making a stake after spending three years . . . I have learned something of human nature as the old saying is I have got my eye teeth cut. I do not concidder my time all together lost." Later that year or early the next, he removed to California. Late in 1866, Mr. Bliss finally returned home to Iowa, sailing by ship from San Francisco to the Panama Isthmus, walking and riding a mule across Panama and then sailing for New York. He became a farmer and stock raiser, first in Union County, Iowa, and then in Lincoln Township where he moved in 1874. In the later years of his life he made several trips to Colorado because of his failing health. He died on one of those trips. He was married in 1869 to Mary Ellen Day. They had seven children: George Day, Leonora, Frederic Charles, John Albert, Ralph Kenneth, Edith Clara, and Frank Horace. Permission to use by Caleb Pitkin