Crandall, Orson Hyde, 1827-1920

Orson Hyde Crandall was a physician, Union soldier, and private secretary to a Mississippi governor during the Reconstruction era. Born on March 31, 1827, in Cicero, New York, Crandall studied medicine at Cincinnati’s Eclectic School of Medicine and became a practicing physician in 1851. He moved to Illinois and volunteered for military service when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Crandall first enlisted in the Fifth Illinois Light Artillery before being appointed assistant surgeon of the Twenty-fourth Illinois Infantry Regiment. At the end of the war, Crandall served as a surgeon at a U.S. military post in Brookhaven, Mississippi. He remained there until being appointed private secretary to military governor Adelbert Ames in 1869. He returned to Illinois in 1870 and worked as a physician for several more years. Crandall died on January 17, 1920. He was married twice, first to Emily Hitchcock, and later to Ruth Adelaide Patchin. He had at least two children. Crandall is buried in Woodland Cemetery in Quincy, Illinois. (FindaGrave; “Crandall, Orson H.,” U.S. Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934; Tri-Weekly Clarion, Meridian, MS, March 27, 1869; 1870 Federal Census, Woodstock, McHenry, Illinois, Roll M593_257, p. 295B)