My Genealogy Hound

DAVID W. NISWONGER, carpenter and builder; resides on Sec. 7; P.O. Arcanum. The subject of this sketch was born in Darke County Jan. 6, 1843, and is a son of John Niswonger, whose sketch appears in this work. Our subject assisted his father in agricultural pursuits till his 18th year, when at his country’s call, he was one of the first to respond, and volunteered in Co. K, of the 19th I. V. I., and afterward belonged to the 2d Corps, in the Army of the Potomac; he passed through several severe engagements, the first at Slaughter Mountain, the second battle of Bull Run, South Mountain, and the battle of Antietam, where he received a severe wound in the left breast that rendered him unfit for military duty, and he was obliged to repair to the hospital, where he remained for six months, when he was honorably discharged from the service and returned to his home, and remained for nine months, but, still thirsting for the smoke and excitement of battle, he again enlisted in Co., B, of the 110th O. V. I., and returned to the front, and passed through the desperate and sanguinary battle of the Wilderness of 1864, where so many brave boys laid down their lives, merely to appease the clamorous cry raised by the North, of “On to Richmond;” nothing of advantage was accomplished by this battle, but the heaps of dead and dying were ghastly witnesses of the great sacrifice of life to our brave boys in blue, and their noble and heroic commander, McClellan, was stigmatized as an inefficient leader, because he led where popular sentiment demanded, but absolutely contrary to the better judgment of men posted in military tactics; after this came the battle of Spottsylvania, the “Slaughter-pen,” where, our subject informs us, the dead lay in literal heaps, and large trees were shattered by the terrible rain of iron hail; he was at Cold Harbor, and in fact all the fighting that was gone through by the Army Potomac, in the great campaign of 1864. At Monocacy Junction, in Maryland, he was taken prisoner, and sent to Danville, and was in the hands of the rebels seven months and thirteen days, when he was exchanged, and came home on furlough and reported at Camp Chase, but on account of ill health, and shattered constitution, caused by the fearful exposure in rebel prison pens, and the brutal treatment he received at their hands, he was honorably discharged from the service of his country in 1865. He returned home and labored on the farm for two years, and then engaged in harness-making in Pittsburgh for four years, when he sold out, and has followed carpentering from then till the present time. He was united in marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of David and Nancy Oldmine, May 19, 1867; her father was born in Pennsylvania, and her mother in Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Niswonger are the parents of six children, viz.: William H., born Oct. 7, 1869; Hetta, V., born April 16, 1872; Sarah E., born July 25, 1874; Clifford, born Dec. 21, 1876; Harry, born Sept. 7, 1879; one dying in infancy. Our subject has had his full share of township offices, having served as Township Clerk for six years, Township Assessor five years. His wife is a member of the German Baptist Church, and an exemplary Christian woman.