William G. Winslow, the second of eleven children of Stephen and Nancy (Howard) Winslow, was born December 22, 1832 in Phillips, Franklin County, Maine. Between 1850 and 1860 the family left Maine and settled in Monroe, Green County, Wisconsin. William worked on the family farm from the time he was about eight years old until he joined the U.S. Army.

William enlisted in the Union Army on September 5, 1861, serving in the 5th Battery of Wisconsin Light Artillery under Captain Joseph McKnight.

This battery was organized at Monroe, but afterwards rendezvoused at Camp Utley in Racine, and was mustered into service on October 1, 1861. They left the state March 15, 1862, for St. Louis and were ordered to New Madrid, where they were engaged in building and guarding forts until the surrender of Island No. 10.

The regiment moved with Pope’s army in April, took position near Corinth, Mississippi, and was in the battle of Farmington (May 9, 1862), where two sections of the battery took position in the extreme front, and for three days defended a bridge, across which the enemy had to advance.

The battery passed through the siege of Corinth, was then on guard duty at Ripley from June 29 until August 14, when it was transferred to the Army of the Tennessee.

In August 1862 William Winslow was listed as “absent sick” in the hospital at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, suffering from pneumonia and inflammation of the lungs. He also spent some time in the hospital at Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1864, but the exact dates are not noted.

After joining the Army of the Tennessee, William’s regiment marched to Nashville, thence to Louisville, Kentucky, then skirmished with the enemy at Bardstown and participated in the battle of Perryville, Kentucky on October 8, 1862. It supported McCook’s corps, which was hard pressed, and repelled three attempts to take the battery. General McCook thanked the battery, saying it had “saved the corps from disgraceful defeat.”

They were again engaged at Stone’s River (December 31, 1862 to January 3, 1863), where they checked the enemy’s advance and were again commended for their “gallant and distinguished” service. They encamped at Murfreesboro during the winter and spring of 1863, and joined the advance towards Chattanooga in June.

The regiment reached Crawfish Springs at Chickamauga on the second day of the battle, but was not in action. It remained near Chickamauga until November 20, going out on short expeditions.

On October 1, 1864, William G. Winslow was ordered to Nashville where his assignment was to retrieve horses for his artillery group. Most of the men, including William, reenlisted in January 1864, and were furloughed home for one month.

On their return the battery was assigned to the 2nd Division, 14th Army Corps, near Rossville, Georgia. It was actively engaged at Resaca (May 8-15, 1864) and was in a severe skirmish near Rome a few days later. It held several important positions in the operations about Dallas and was in the front at Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia (June 9-30).

Subsequently it took a new position from which it did such effective work as to compel the enemy’s artillery to vacate its position. At the battle of Peachtree Creek (July 19-20) it shelled the enemy out of his works and was then in active service about Atlanta until August 28, 1864.

They were in the engagement at Jonesboro (August 31-September 1), and then remained in camp at Atlanta until October 3, when they went on the expedition to repel Hood’s threatened attack upon the railroad communications. They returned to Atlanta, moved from there to Savannah with the army, accompanied Sherman north, participated in the battle of Bentonville, North Carolina (March 18-22, 1865), and the Grand Review on May 23-24, 1865 at Washington DC.

During his service, William worked his way through the ranks of private, corporal, and finally became a sergeant. The regiment proceeded back to Madison, Wisconsin where they were honorably discharged on June 14, 1865.

Ten years after his military service, William married his wife, Lavina E. Makepeace, on August 29, 1875 in Monroe, Green County, Wisconsin. He was forty-two years old when he married Lavina, considered late in life by standards of his time. Lavina, on the other hand, was just a few months shy of her twenty-second birthday, being born about December 1853 in Wisconsin.

By the 16th of July 1890, William and Lavina were living in Friend, Saline County, Nebraska. There he filed his Civil War “Declaration for Invalid Pension” in which he declared that he was “partly unable to earn a support by reason of rheumatism . . . general disability, piles [hemorrhoids] and gravel [a deposit of small calculous concretions (stones) in the kidneys and bladder].”

Some thirteen years later, when he filed a “Declaration for an Original Invalid Pension (filed 5 December 1903), William was a 70 year old man, 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with a dark complexion, and having gray hair and dark brown eyes.

He claimed that while serving in Georgia he had “incurred deafness caused by heavy artillery firing, and he also contracted rheumatism & piles caused by exposure and broken veins caused by horseback riding.” His “rheumatism and piles first appeared about 1862, and . . . [he] first noticed the broken veins about 1863.”

By the time William made his final application for a pension in April 1907 he had become “blind, and so badly afflicted with shaking paralysis that even if he could see he would not be able to sign his own name to this declaration or to any other paper.”

William never articulated these ailments prior to the time he filed for an invalid pension because he was a loyal American and felt strongly about serving his country. He died March 21, 1909 in Friend, Saline County, Nebraska, at the age of seventy-six.

Although some may have considered Lavina cold and insensitive for what she did after William’s death, it is more likely that most saw her just as a grieving, astute widow. However she was perceived, she filed a “Declaration for Widow’s Pension” before William was even cold and in the ground. Two days after his death she had completed the petition for a widows pension-which she received (at $40 a month)-until her own death almost 25 years later. Lavina died on February 3, 1933 in Friend, Saline County, Nebraska

William and Lavina had one child together: Daniel Winslow born July 1882 in Nebraska. In 1900 he lived with his parents in Friend Village and worked as a day laborer. Daniel never married.