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The Twenty-ninth Iowa was organized at Camp Kirkwood. They gathered together in August, 1862, and in December the command was ready to take the field. There was a reunion that was held on October 28, 29 and 30, 1882, of which many attended. Pottawattamie County furnished the field and the Colonel, Thomas H Benton, Jr., Major, Joseph Lyman; Surgeon, Dr. William S. Grimes, now of Denver, and after the war a long-time a physician at Des Moines; and the Quartermaster, William W. Wilson, now a banker in Lincoln, Neb. Company A--was from Pottawattamie County, with John P. Williams, Captain, George A. Haynes, First Lieutenant, and R. R. Kirkpatrick, Second Lieutenant. Capt. Williams is an employee of the Council Bluffs Post Office; Haynes is a merchant at Maysville, Cal., and R. R. Kirkpatrick lives at Oakland, Cal. C. V. Gardner, one of the founders of Avoca, and afterward of Deadwood, D. T., succeeded Williams ad Captain of Company A, a short time after the regiment reached the field, and remained at the head of the company during the war. Williams resigned on account of ill health. The regiment had an honorable career, and was discharged at New Orleans, on the 10th of August, 1865, after having served on the Rio Grande for some months after actual hostilities ceased in that quarter, by the surrender of Dick Taylor and Kirby Smith. Thirty men of the Twenty-ninth were killed in battle and died of wounds, 253 of disease and 134 were discharged on account of disability.
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