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Strattons of Massachusetts Bay
Running Through the Sands of Time
A Story of Isaac William King and the 88th Indiana Infantry
**The Scar He Carried**A Story of Isaac William King and the 88th Indiana Infantry
The axe bit deep into the hickory round, and Isaac William King felt the blade skip sideways, glancing off a hidden knot. Before he could jerk back, cold fire raced across the top of his right foot. He looked down. Blood was already soaking through the coarse leather of his work boot.
"Pa!" he shouted toward the cabin, his voice tight.
His father, Christian King, dropped the harness he'd been mending and ran. By the time he reached Isaac, the boy—sixteen years old and built like a young ox—had sat heavily on the chopping stump, boot off, foot wrapped in his shirt.
"Let me see it."
Isaac unwrapped the makeshift bandage. The gash ran from the base of his big toe nearly to his ankle, deep enough that white showed beneath the red. Christian's jaw tightened.
"Hold still."
He poured corn whiskey over the wound. Isaac hissed through his teeth but didn't cry out. His mother, Elizabeth, came running from the house with clean linen and vinegar, her face pale. Behind her, Isaac's older sister Susan appeared in the doorway, one hand pressed to her mouth.
"Is he all right?" Susan called.
"He will be," Christian said grimly. "Fetch more water."
They wrapped the wound tight, and Christian looked his son hard in the eye.
"No fieldwork for two weeks. You'll mend harness, feed stock, and keep off that foot. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
That evening, Isaac sat at the long table in the cabin while his mother served supper. His ten older siblings—Elizabeth, Nancy, Joseph, David, Lydia, Sarah, Susan, Henry, Jonathan, and Barbara—crowded the benches, and his brother Joseph, the practical one, leaned over to inspect the bandaged foot.
"That'll leave a mark," Joseph said.
"Better a mark than losing the foot entirely," their oldest sister Elizabeth said sharply. "You were careless, Isaac."
"I know it."
His father cleared his throat. "The boy knows. Leave it be."
Isaac ate in silence, feeling the throb of the wound with every heartbeat. He was the youngest of eleven, born late to parents who'd already raised a houseful. They'd come to Perry Township, Noble County, from Ohio in 1855, when Isaac was eleven, settling on 320 acres near the Haw Patch—a fertile region of gentle rolling land named for the abundance of hawthorn trees, known throughout the county for its rich soil and productive farms. The land was hard work but good, covered in sugar maple and black walnut when Christian King first cleared it, and Christian had taught all his sons to work it. Isaac had learned early: you pull your weight, you don't complain, and you finish what you start.
The scar healed crooked, leaving a pale ridge that pulled when he walked. Isaac told himself it was a reminder: pay attention, keep your mind on the work. But in the spring of 1862, when the drums began to beat and recruiters came through Noble County calling for volunteers, that scar became something else—a question he could not answer. Would it keep him from the fight?
"I have not permitted myself to suppose that either the public mind, or the Executive power, will be found adequate to the suppression of the rebellion." —Abraham Lincoln
On a humid August morning in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Isaac William King stood in a line of farm boys, mechanics, and clerks, waiting to be mustered in. The recruiting sergeant, a lean man with a Kentucky drawl, walked down the row, eyeing each volunteer.
"Name?"
"Isaac William King, sir. Perry Township, Noble County."
"Age?"
"Eighteen." He was still seventeen, but his birthday was May 30, and the war wouldn't wait.
"Any infirmities? Lame? Blind? Consumptive?"
Isaac hesitated. The sergeant's eyes narrowed.
"Speak up, boy."
"Cut my foot with an axe a year back, sir. Healed fine. Doesn't slow me."
The sergeant knelt, tugged off Isaac's boot, and studied the scar. He pressed his thumb along the ridge. Isaac felt the old ache but kept his face still.
"Can you march?"
"Yes, sir."
"Run?"
"Yes, sir."
The sergeant stood. "You'll do. Company B, 88th Indiana Infantry. Welcome to the war, King."
On August 29, 1862, the regiment mustered in at Indianapolis. Colonel George Humphrey, a square-shouldered man with a trimmed beard and steady eyes, addressed them in ranks.
"You are soldiers of Indiana, and you will march alongside the best the Union has. You'll face hardship. You'll face fear. Some of you will not come home. But you will hold the line. You will do your duty. God willing, you'll see this Union preserved."
Isaac stood at attention, rifle on his shoulder, the Indianapolis sun beating down. He thought of his parents back in Perry Township—his father Christian, now in his fifties, managing the farm with his older brothers Joseph, David, and Henry. His mother Elizabeth, who'd held him the night before he left and said only, "Come home to us, Isaac. That's all I ask."
Around him, boys who'd never been farther than the county fair tried to stand like soldiers. He wondered how many of them would still be standing a year from now.
"It is well that war is so terrible—lest we should grow too fond of it." —Robert E. Lee
The 88th moved south by rail and foot, reaching Louisville just in time to help defend the city against Confederate General Kirby Smith's advance. Isaac had expected battle immediately, but instead they dug earthworks, stood picket, and learned to sleep in the mud.
On October 1, the regiment joined the pursuit of Bragg's army into Kentucky. A week later, at Perryville, Isaac heard the sound he would carry the rest of his life: the high, eerie wail of the Rebel yell rising from a line of gray-clad infantry charging across an open cornfield.
"Steady!" Lieutenant Miller shouted. "Wait for the order!"
Isaac knelt in line, ramrod in hand, heart hammering. The Confederates came on at the double-quick, a ragged line that seemed to stretch forever.
"Load!"
Isaac tore a cartridge with his teeth, poured powder, rammed ball and paper home.
"Aim!"
He brought the Springfield to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel at a man in butternut, close enough now to see his face—a boy, younger than Isaac, mouth open in a yell.
"Fire!"
The volley roared. White smoke rolled across the field. Isaac's ears rang. He reloaded by feel, hands moving through the drill, eyes stinging. When the smoke cleared, the butternut line was closer, gaps torn in their ranks, but still coming.
"Fire at will!"
Now it was chaos—load, aim, fire, the man beside him going down with a grunt, someone behind screaming for a surgeon. The Confederates reached the fence line and Isaac saw an officer with a saber, shouting, urging them on. He fired, loaded, fired again. His shoulder ached from the recoil, his hands were black with powder, and still they came.
Then the bugle sounded and the gray line wavered, stopped, began to fall back. The 88th held.
That night, Isaac sat by a fire with the others of Company B, too tired to eat. A corporal named Jennings passed a canteen.
"You did fine, King."
Isaac took a swallow—water, not whiskey—and handed it back. "Didn't feel fine."
"Never does. But you stood. That's what counts."
Isaac looked at his hands, still trembling slightly. He thought of the boy in butternut, wondered if his shot had found him. He thought of his brother Jonathan back home, barely older than that Confederate boy. Wondered if it mattered.
"The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts in the hour of danger." —Andrew Jackson
The 88th marched to Nashville, then south again, into Tennessee. At Stones River, on the last day of 1862, they went in again. This time the fight lasted three days—a grinding, bloody affair in winter woods and frozen fields. The regiment took heavy losses but drove the enemy from his works in a final charge on January 3, bayonets fixed, voices hoarse from shouting.
Isaac remembered little of it afterward—flashes, fragments. The way the ground shook under artillery fire. The metallic taste of fear. The weight of a wounded man he'd helped carry to the rear, the man's blood soaking Isaac's coat, his voice a whisper: Tell my mother I tried.
In the months that followed, the 88th moved through middle Tennessee, skirmishing, marching, waiting. Isaac's foot ached on long marches, the scar pulling tight, but he kept pace. He learned to sleep through rain, to boil coffee in a tin cup over a smoky fire, to write letters home on scraps of paper with a stub of pencil.
Dear Mother and Father,
I am well. We march most days. The food is poor but I have enough. Do not worry for me. I think of the farm and of home. Give my regards to Elizabeth, Nancy, Joseph, David, Lydia, Sarah, Susan, Henry, Jonathan, and Barbara.
Your son, Isaac
He did not tell them about Perryville, or Stones River, or the dreams that woke him in the night.
"A private's pay may be small, but his duty is great." —Union Army saying
In September 1863, the 88th marched into Georgia, crossing the Cumberland Mountains and the Tennessee River. At Chickamauga, they met Bragg's army again, this time in thick woods where you couldn't see twenty yards. The fighting was confused, desperate—units tangled, regiments firing into their own lines by mistake, the roar of battle so constant it became a kind of silence.
On the second day, Isaac's company was ordered forward to plug a gap in the line. They moved at the double-quick through underbrush and smoke, and suddenly the trees ahead erupted with musket fire. Men went down all around him. Isaac dropped behind a log, loaded, fired blindly into the smoke. A sergeant he didn't know was shouting orders, and then the sergeant was gone, and it was just Isaac and a handful of others, holding a log-and-dirt breastwork against wave after wave of attackers.
He didn't know how long it lasted. An hour, maybe two. His rifle barrel was too hot to touch. His ammunition was nearly gone. A man next to him—a boy from Fort Wayne named Aldrich—took a ball in the chest and slumped against the log, eyes wide.
"Isaac—"
"I'm here, Aldrich."
"Tell them—tell them I—"
But Aldrich didn't finish. Isaac closed the boy's eyes, took his cartridge box, and kept firing.
When the order finally came to fall back, Isaac moved like a man in a dream. The regiment retreated to Rossville Gap, then into the siege lines around Chattanooga. They'd lost half their strength. Colonel Humphrey was wounded. The survivors dug in and waited.
Sitting in the trenches that night, Isaac looked at his hands—filthy, blistered, shaking. He thought of the farm, of splitting firewood with his brother Henry, of his mother's voice calling him in for supper. It felt like another life, a memory belonging to someone else.
"I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." —Ulysses S. Grant
The siege of Chattanooga dragged through October into November. The 88th held the lines, cold and hungry, supplies running low. Confederate artillery commanded the heights—Lookout Mountain to the south, Missionary Ridge to the east—and every day brought shelling.
On November 23, Grant's breakout began. The 88th moved forward with the rest of the Army of the Cumberland, taking Orchard Knob in a quick, sharp fight. Two days later came the order Isaac had been dreading: assault Missionary Ridge.
But before the assault, there was other work. Union batteries had been hauled into position on the lower slopes, and they needed feeding. A lieutenant Isaac didn't know grabbed him and a half-dozen others.
"You men—ammunition detail. Follow me."
They ran forward in a crouch, each man carrying two wooden crates of shells, sixty pounds or more. The ridge loomed ahead, steep and wooded, Confederate guns dug in along the crest. Rebel sharpshooters opened up as they climbed. A man ahead of Isaac grunted and fell, spilling his load. Isaac didn't stop.
The Union battery was positioned halfway up the ridge, four twelve-pounders firing as fast as the crews could load. The ground shook with each discharge. The sergeant in charge of the guns pointed.
"Stack it there! Then get back down and bring more!"
Isaac dropped his crates, turned, and ran back down the slope. His foot screamed with every step, the old scar pulling, something tearing deep inside. He ignored it. There were more crates waiting at the base of the ridge.
He made four trips that day. On the third, a shell burst overhead and shrapnel tore through the man beside him. Isaac kept climbing. On the fourth, his right boot was soaked with blood, but the guns were still firing and they needed shells.
When the order finally came to fall back and regroup for the infantry assault, Isaac could barely walk. A corporal grabbed his arm.
"You all right, King?"
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding through your boot."
"I said I'm fine."
The next day, November 25, the 88th joined the general assault on Missionary Ridge. Isaac ran with the others, up that impossible slope, through Confederate rifle pits, past their own officers shouting at them to stop and re-form, and he didn't stop until they reached the crest and the Rebel line broke.
He'd held. They'd won.
But that night, when he finally pulled off his boot, the scar had split open, and the flesh around it was swollen, hot to the touch. He wrapped it as best he could and said nothing. There was still a war to fight.
The Atlanta Campaign came next—a grinding, methodical advance through north Georgia. Resaca, Dallas, Kennesaw Mountain—the names blurred together. The 88th was in the thick of it, skirmishing daily, assaulting fortified ridges, flanking, entrenching, moving again. Isaac's muster rolls from 1864 showed him present for duty, month after month, one more private in Company B doing his part.
At Kennesaw, they assaulted a Confederate position on a steep, wooded slope. The attack failed. Isaac made it halfway up before the fire became too heavy and the order came to withdraw. He slid back down the hill on his belly, bullets clipping branches overhead, and when he reached the Union lines he found half his company missing.
That night, Corporal Jennings—now a sergeant—sat beside him.
"You still got that scar on your foot, King?"
Isaac glanced at him, surprised. "Yeah. Why?"
"Reminds me you've been lucky. Most boys who started with us are gone—dead, discharged, captured. You're still here."
"Don't feel lucky."
"None of us do. But you are." Jennings stood, clapped him on the shoulder. "Keep your head down. War won't last forever."
"War is all that's talked of now; that and the price of grain." —William Tecumseh Sherman
In September 1864, Atlanta fell, and the 88th marched in. A month later, they turned and marched out again, this time with Sherman's entire army, heading east. No supply line. No communication. Just sixty thousand men cutting a swath through Georgia, living off the land, tearing up railroads, burning what they couldn't carry.
Isaac had never seen anything like it—whole plantations abandoned, slaves streaming into the Union columns, towns emptied, the smell of burning cotton and pine smoke hanging over everything. They marched twenty miles a day, and the land itself seemed to melt before them.
At a place called Griswoldville, they fought a sharp action against Georgia militia—old men and boys, poorly armed, bravely foolish. The 88th mowed them down. Afterward, Isaac walked the field and saw a gray-haired man lying dead with a squirrel rifle beside him. The man reminded him of his father. He turned away, sick.
They reached Savannah in December, the regiment lean and hard and utterly spent. Sherman sent Lincoln a telegram offering him the city as a Christmas present. Isaac stood on the docks, looking out at the Atlantic, and felt nothing at all.
"The Union must and shall be preserved." —Abraham Lincoln
The Carolinas Campaign followed—more marching, more skirmishing, more mud and rain and burning. At Bentonville, in March 1865, they fought their last real battle. The Confederates attacked hard, trying to stop Sherman's juggernaut, and for a few hours it looked like Chickamauga all over again. But the 88th held, and the attack broke, and Johnston's army faded into the pines.
Three weeks later, the surrender came. Isaac heard the news in camp near Raleigh: Lee had given up at Appomattox. Johnston would follow. The war was over.
Men cheered, fired their rifles in the air, wept openly. Isaac sat on his bedroll, staring at his hands. He'd been a soldier for nearly three years. He'd marched a thousand miles. He'd fought in a dozen battles. And now it was done.
"We did it, boys!" Sergeant Jennings shouted. "By God, we did it!"
Isaac nodded. He supposed they had.
"I am a soldier, and have served through the war." —Ulysses S. Grant
In May 1865, the 88th Indiana marched to Washington, past the burned ruins of Richmond, past the silent battlefields of Virginia. They camped on the outskirts of the capital and drilled for the Grand Review—one last parade before mustering out.
On May 24, Isaac marched down Pennsylvania Avenue with twenty thousand other Western troops, crowds lining the route, flags waving, bands playing. He kept step, rifle on his shoulder, the scar on his foot pulling with every stride. He thought of the farm in Perry Township, of his parents Christian and Elizabeth, of his ten brothers and sisters, of the life waiting for him in Noble County. He thought of Aldrich, and the boy in butternut at Perryville, and all the others who weren't marching today.
When they passed the reviewing stand, President Johnson and General Sherman saluting, Isaac looked straight ahead. He'd done his part. He'd held the line. He was going home.
A week later, Private Isaac William King mustered out with the rest of Company B, 88th Indiana Infantry. He took his discharge papers, his final pay, and a rail ticket north.
He returned to Perry Township and the Haw Patch, married, raised a family, and farmed the land his father had cleared. But the scar on his foot never truly healed. The years of marching, the strain of hauling ammunition up Missionary Ridge, the infection that had set in during the siege—all of it took its toll. By the 1880s, he walked with a pronounced limp. By the 1890s, he could no longer work a full day in the fields.
In his later years, Isaac applied for and received a federal pension for his wartime service, eventually rated at 100% disability. The government doctors noted chronic injury to the right foot, severe enough to prevent manual labor. Isaac never complained. He'd done his part. He'd held the line.
When his son—Volney William—asked him once what the war had been like, Isaac looked at the boy for a long moment.
"We did what had to be done," he said quietly. "And we came home."
That was all he ever said.
Isaac William King died in 1924, at the age of eighty. He was laid to rest in the cemetery beside the little church in the Haw Patch, alongside his parents Christian and Elizabeth, his brothers and sisters, and the generations of Kings who had made that fertile land their home.
Author's Note:
This story is based on the military service of Isaac William King (1844–1924), youngest of eleven children born to Christian and Elizabeth King. Isaac's siblings were Elizabeth, Nancy, Joseph, David, Lydia, Sarah, Susan, Henry, Jonathan, and Barbara. The family moved from Fairfield, Ohio, to Perry Township, Noble County, Indiana, around 1855, settling on a 320-acre farm near the Haw Patch—a fertile region known for its rich soil and abundance of hawthorn trees.
Isaac enlisted in Company B, 88th Indiana Infantry, on August 29, 1862, and served throughout the Civil War. His muster rolls show him present for duty from 1863 through 1865. The 88th Indiana fought at Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and throughout the Atlanta and Carolinas campaigns. The regiment marched with Sherman to the sea and participated in the Grand Review in Washington, D.C., in May 1865.
Isaac returned to Perry Township after the war and farmed in the Haw Patch for the rest of his life. He received a federal pension for war-related disabilities, eventually rated at 100%, primarily due to chronic crippling of his right foot—the result of an axe injury sustained in his youth, compounded by years of hard marching and the strain of hauling ammunition up Missionary Ridge under fire during the Battle of Chattanooga in November 1863. He died in 1924 at the age of eighty and is buried with his family in the cemetery beside the little church in the Haw Patch.
The story of Isaac carrying artillery shells up Missionary Ridge was passed down through family tradition and remembered vividly by the author's older cousin, Jim Biddle. All battle details and unit movements are drawn from historical records of the 88th Indiana Infantry. The personal details—Isaac's thoughts, conversations, and interior life—are the author's interpretation, grounded in family history and the documented experiences of soldiers who served in the regiment. Isaac's middle name, William, was later given to his grandson, the author's grandfather.
—Wm. F. Stratton, April 2026
Over 50 years of research into the Stratton, Schneider, King, and allied families—from colonial Massachusetts to Indiana and beyond. Built by Bill & Karen Stratton.
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