Schooley, Joseph Plummer, 1832-1895

Joseph Plummer Schooley was a Union officer during the Civil War and early part of Reconstruction in the south. Born on August 29, 1832, in Manchester, Indiana, Schooley moved to Illinois with his young wife, Ellen Bliven Clarke, in the 1850s. He volunteered for Union military service when the Civil War broke out in 1861 and enlisted in the Seventy-sixth Illinois Infantry Regiment. He reached the rank of sergeant major before resigning from that regiment in 1864 to be commissioned as an officer in the Fourth Mississippi Infantry Regiment (African Descent)—a regiment comprising primarily of former slaves, commanded by white officers. The regiment was renamed the Sixty-sixth United States Colored Troops in March 1864. Schooley held the rank of captain in the unit when the war ended in 1865. He remained with the regiment during its occupation duty in Mississippi for several months after the war. Schooley separated from the Union army around 1866 and returned to his family in Illinois and moved to Missouri. His first wife passed away in September 1871, and Schooley married Mary Etta White that in December same year. He had a total of twelve children from the two marriages. Schooley died on December 4, 1895, in Austin, Missouri. He is buried in the Austin town cemetery. (FindaGrave; National Park Service; Wikipedia)