Family History stories: Isaac Sheldon
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- Isaac Sheldon
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- Isaac Sheldon obituary in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on Nov. 11, 1940.
Many readers from Northern Utah and Utah Valley responded to an invitation to share their favorite family history stories and experiences. Here is one of those stories:
Isaac Sheldon (January 26, 1844 – November 9, 1940) was my great-great grandfather. At first I knew very little about him, largely because he had isolated himself from his family for most of his life. As I began to look closer at him, I found that he had led a fascinating life.
Isaac was born January 26,1844, in New York. Nothing is known of his childhood, but we know that he joined the Union Army at the beginning of the Civil War and fought all 4 years of the conflict. He was wounded at Appomattox and found on the battlefield 2 days after the battle ended. After the war he moved west.
Isaac married my great-great grandmother Rose Ann Putnam on July 22, 1882, in Miles City, Montana. They had 2 daughters – Anna May and Minnie Linn, who became my great grandmother. Sadly, Isaac and Rose were divorced within a few years.
Not much is known of Isaac’s life from the mid-1880’s until the early 1900’s when he homesteaded in the American Falls, Idaho, area. He married twice more: in 1908 to Hattie Elnora Danielson who died in childbirth along with their son in 1909; and in 1918 to Bernetta Walters Hickman Allen who survived him. He lived in American Falls until his death on November 9, 1940. He is buried in Falls View Cemetery in American Falls.
We don’t know whether or not he was the oldest living Civil War veteran in the state of Idaho at the time of his death, but he may very well have been because he earned an obituary in both the Ogden Standard Examiner and the Salt Lake Tribune.
Carol Lisonbee
