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Great-grandson of Anna Catharina
Wirtz, daughter of Conrad and Maria Barbara Bentz Wirtz. Name also
has been shown as Philip J. Wince. The following story is from
The History of Henry County, IL.
Philip J. Wintz
was born in Rappahannock County, Virginia, November 4, 1826, and is
a son of Henry and Sarah Frye Wintz. His paternal grandfather came
from Germany, and his father was born in Culpeper County, Virginia,
April 17, 1788. On the 3rd of June, 1824, in Loudoun County,
Virginia, he was married, by Rev. S.G. Raszell, to Miss Sarah Frye,
who was born February 10, 1797. Her father was born August 13,
1755, and came to America in 1793. He died November 20, 1841, and
is buried in Middleburg, Loudoun County, Virginia, where he farmed
for some years. During the war of 1812 he was drafted into the army
but by the time he had received his accouterments and had reached
Middleburg, the war was closed and his services were not needed. On
the 7th of April, 1796 he was united in marriage by Rev John
Littlejohn to Miss Catherine Vertz. Of the family born to this
union Mrs. Henry Wintz was the eldest, the others being: Elizabeth,
born January 24, 1799, died unmarried, September 7, 1866; Margaret,
born December 12, 1800, became the wife of David Daly, of Preble
County, Ohio and died in Indiana in 1848; Joseph, born May 14, 1809,
remained unmarried and died on the old homestead, July 2, 1876;
Conrad, born May 14, 1809, married Susannah Thomas and died in
Butler County, Ohio, September 29, 1882; Ann C., born April 30,
1814, wedded Townsend Howell, of Virginia, and died in Clark County,
Illinois, February 9, 1886; Christina, born December 27, 1816, died,
unmarried, in Loudoun County, Virginia, April 7, 1877; Evaline, born
March 12, 1820, became the wife of James Lawson, of Fauquier County,
Virginia, and died in Maryland, March 23, 1899; and George P., born
October 30, 1823, died in Loudoun County at the age of fifteen.
After his marriage Henry Wintz farmed in his native state until
1828, when he moved to Warren County, Ohio, and then to Preble
County, Ohio, where near New Hope he rented a farm for six years.
He died, however, before the expiration of the lease, October 27,
1833, and his wife passed away September 18, 1846. Mr. and Mrs.
Henry Wintz were the parents of five children: Peter, born
September 5, 1825, married Catherine Frye and died March 10, 1908;
Philip J. is the next in order of birth; Mary Ann, who was born
August 22, 1828, became the wife of Samuel Frye and passed away May
25, 1891; Daniel, born June 15, 1831, married Miss Sabina Trucksess,
who lived near Converse, Howard County, Indiana, where he died April
13, 1904; and Elizabeth, born March 23, 1833, is the widow of George
Lowman of Sedgwick County, Kansas.
Philip J. Wintz is not only one
of Annawan’s wealthiest and most widely known citizens, but also
enjoys the distinction of being the oldest settler in Annawan
Township, for when he came to Illinois and for four or five years
after his advent of the Winnebago tribe of Indians were still in the
neighborhood of the town. During a period of more than six decades
he has been an eye-witness of the changes that have transformed the
character of the country, has taken part in them, in fact, and in
the great struggle that almost wrecked the nation. Endowed by
nature with a retentive memory, he had been able to write many
accounts of those early days, of his experiences on the battlefield,
and of the travels which have occupied part of his later years. His
life of activity and deeds of valor are but the just conclusion of
the records of his ancestors who braved the perils of a new country
in the days of its infancy.
Philip Wintz was but six years
of age when his father died and only nineteen when his mother was
taken from him. He received a very slight education in the district
schools of Preble County, Ohio a month a year for fourteen years.
The schoolhouse was a log building in which even the desks and seats
were made of split logs set up on pegs. At the age of twenty-four
he went to Springboro, Warren County, Ohio were he secured work on a
farm for ten dollars per month and then took up carpenter work and
the trade of millwright. In April 1852, he came to Illinois,
locating in Sheffield, Bureau County, where the Rock Island and the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroads were then building and where
he bought eighty acres of land for three hundred and sixty-seven
dollars in cash. It was an unfortunate investment, however, for
because of defect in the title, he lost his right to possession.
Although somewhat discouraged by this incident, he went to work to
make a fortune, borrowing one hundred dollars, with which he went to
Chicago to get tools and a carload of lumber. On March 2, 1855, he
came to Annawan, and after a short visit in the east he built what
is now the kitchen of his present residence. For a year he worked
at carpentry and then opened a blacksmith shop, the first in Annawan,
on the lot adjoining his present home. He also helped to build the
first mill here, which he sold a year later. Until 1884, he devoted
his energies to the carpenter’s and millwright’s trades,
constructing the majority of buildings in the southern part of the
township, including a church, which he erected in 1858, and a second
mill. The last residence which he built was that of James
MacChesney in 1877. During the period between 1854 and 1862 he made
the greater number of coffins in Henry County, two dollars being the
smallest price received for one and twenty-five dollars the highest.
Being a man of very methodical habits he has kept a record of all
the coffins he made and the name of the person for whom it was
intended, and the price paid for each.
After the inauguration of the
Civil War, Mr. Wintz enlisted at Princeton, Bureau County Illinois,
as a musician in a regimental band which had started from St. Louis
to join Burgess’ sharpshooters at Alton. They were arrested before
they reached their destination, however, for the reason that the
colonel of the regiment they were going to join had reported that
they were deserters from the ranks and were going to join the
rebels. Upon finding these statements untrue, Governor Yates
ordered them to Springfield, and then, after two weeks spent in Camp
Butler, sent them to Camp Douglas, Chicago, where the band was
assigned to the fifty-seventh Illinois Volunteer Infantry. The
regiment was sent to Cairo, then to Paducah, Kentucky, whence they
went by boat to Fort Henry, arriving there just after the battle, in
time to cook their suppers upon the fires which the rebels had
left. Returning to Paducah, they went up the Ohio and Cumberland
rivers to Fort Donelson and took part in the engagement at that
place. Thence they marched fourteen miles to Fort Henry, up the
Tennessee River to Krump’s Landing, where Mr. Wintz was discharged
and mustered out of service, April 20, 1862. Returning home to
Annawan he enlisted August 20 of the same year, in Company A, 112th
Illinois Volunteer Infantry, which was mustered in at Peroria. John
L. Dow was captain, but Tristram T. Dow was first captain and was
subsequently made colonel of the regiment and took his men to
Cincinnati, then to Covington, Kentucky, where they remained two
weeks, and then to Lexington. After a few skirmishes Mr. Wintz was
detailed for six months to Captain Low’s howitzer battery to follow
Morgan’s band on their raids through Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana to
Buffington’s Island, where they captured Morgan’s guns, in 1863.
This campaign being closed he rejoined his old company and went to
Kingston and Athens, Tennessee, and later to Loudoun, where in a
skirmish on November 18, 1863, Captain Asa H. Lee, commander of
Company A, was killed, and Mr. Wintz received a gunshot wound behind
his right ear, making a total of four of the company killed and two
wounded. When Mr. Wintz regained consciousness after having
received his wound he found that the Confederate line had advanced
beyond him, thus cutting him from his companions. Making his way
through a small vineyard he got into a barn, and when this was
struck by a rebel gun, crawled in a corn crib. This too was torn to
pieces by a shell and the man forced to continue his painful way
outdoors. He staggered through the timber to his company, but on
the way to the field hospital fell exhausted on the bank of Second
creek, where the ambulance corps found him. Mr. Wintz was then
confined to the hospital at Knoxville, Tennessee, until January 18,
after which he was given a thirty days’ furlough. In March, at Mt.
Sterling, he rejoined his company and participated in the skirmishes
at Rocky Face, Georgia, and the battle of Resaca, in which he
received a gunshot wound in his right arm, which necessitated his
being sent to Louisville, Kentucky, where he remained until July,
when having contracted smallpox, he was sent to a hospital near
Louisville, in which he was confined until October, 1864. Starting
then to rejoin his regiment at Atlanta, he spent a couple weeks in
Chattanooga, where he was on duty in the convalescent camp and was
then detailed with orders to drive a thousand head of cattle to
Atlanta for Sherman’s army. At Atlanta he met his company returning
and joining them he went to Nashville, December 1864, and followed
Hood for one month to Columbia, Tennessee. At Clifton, on the
Tennessee River, they boarded a steamer and went to Cincinnati,
thence by rail to Alexandria, Virginia, by way of Columbia and
Bellaire, and then by Steamer to Fort Fisher. During a storm in the
last stage of his journey the vessels were blown sixty miles to
sea. After one month spent in Fort Fisher, the company went to
Smithville, North Carolina, taking part in the skirmish at that
place and in the siege and capture of Fort Anderson, and going then
to Wilmington and Kingston, North Carolina. At the last named place
Mr. Wintz sprained his ankle and was sent to the hospital for the
third time, remaining there for a month, or until he was honorably
discharged June 14, 1865. Since the close of the war Mr. Wintz has
been a member of the Grand Army and has attended more than a dozen
of the national encampments, the last having been at Salt Lake City,
Utah in 1909. In these where the soldiers from the whole country
congregate, he revives with his comrades the stories of the camp
fires and the events of the battle.
On returning from the war, Mr.
Wintz worked at the carpenter’s and millwright’s trades as in the
days before the struggle. But more and more time he has given to
his literary labors. Possessed of a fine style and relying upon his
excellent memory for the facts which are not recorded in his
notebooks he has written very readable histories of Annawan township
and of the old settlers. Of recent years he has been compelled to
use a typewriter, though not so formerly, for he wrote a beautiful
clear English hand, unsurpassed by few of his generation and
unequaled in this. He kept a record of all his contracts, of his
war experiences, of his travels, and of his church. A copy of his
history of Annawan and Albion townships he sent to the Old Settlers
Association in Geneseo, where it is accounted as a work of value.
On April 8, 1852, Mr. Wintz
married Mary Frye of Springboro Ohio. There were no children from
this union. Although a woman who never enjoyed the best of health,
Mary was very active, a great sewer, and of a bright disposition.
She was a good wife, a kind neighbor and beloved by all. With her
husband she belonged to the United Brethren Church and has been
greatly missed since her death, and is buried in Fair View
Cemetery. Mr. Wintz is the only son-in-law of his wife’s parents
not living, and is himself without offspring. Since his wife’s
demise he has lived alone in the house he built, a good structure,
twenty-eight by eighteen feet, with eighteen foot studding for two
full stories, with a large kitchen of one story, sixteen by
twenty-one feet. It is located on Depot and Second Streets. He now
conducts a shop for the repair of furniture, organs, sewing
machines, parasols and everything that can be repaired, for he is
almost a genius at this kind of work. He is also engaged in
superintending the building of the new town hall, a brick
construction with cement foundation, of which Howard Fritzkee is the
contractor. A member of the United Brethren Church, he has been
secretary and treasure of their quarterly conferences, of which he
has written the histories. In politics he is a republican and cast
his first ballot for Zachary Taylor in 1848, the day before he
became twenty-one, all the voters in the locality having agree to
accord him that privilege. Mr. Wintz presented to the American’s
Yeoman League a lot adjoins his own fifty-four by one hundred and
fifty feet in the town of Annawan, on which will be built a chapter
house. Though eighty-two years of age he still retains the love of
music that inspired him as a young man. In other ways also the
years have not affected him, for he sees without the use of glasses
and is not troubled by his hearing. He is a self-made man, and this
may be emphasized, for almost with any schooling he has become a
good, fluent writer, a master in the repair shop, and a man of
wealth in the community, owning considerable property, including one
hundred and seventy acres in Wilson County, Kansas. His judgment is
regarded so highly and his memory is so accurate that the citizens
of Annawan have become accustomed to referring dubious points and
questions to him for settlement. Yet he is modest as regards his
accomplishments, and in his chery way disclaims any undue praise for
what he is, and for what he has done, either for himself or his
country.
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