Alonzo Trembel Kenaston
1843 – 1886
My 2X great grandfather

"History seems to happen exclusively by accident on purpose."

All of his adult life, my two times great-grandfather, Alonzo Trembel Kenaston, suffered from a condition he referred to as his Troubles, which began with his service as a nineteen-year-old in the Army of the Cumberland's Kentucky Campaign in the Autumn of 1862. He was a fresh recruit from Illinois with only three weeks of training before he marched into Kentucky to chase Bragg's Confederate force out of the state. The campaign achieved its objective, but at ruinous cost; the Union lost battles but managed to scare off its opponents with sheer numbers. The march proved ruinous enough, that country having suffered through the summer drought, leaving little water for fifty-five thousand Union and seventeen thousand Confederate troops. The campaign became a pursuit for the Union, hampered by rough and hilly terrain culminating in an unseasonal wet snowfall, which left the barefoot troops at great disadvantage.

—

"From London, we marched three days over cliffy, extremely hilly, heavily timbered land. We were twelve miles from Somerset when we came to cross Buck Creek. It had been raining with the temperature dropping. Some ninety men in our company were barefoot, and the rest of us were nearly so. Rain turned to sleet. During the night, snow fell to a depth of about fourteen inches. We didn’t have tents, and few had blankets. We built big fires and huddled close to them through the night." —from a fictional characterization created by Second Cousin, Once Removed Elizabeth Jensen

From Alonzo's Civil War Disability Claim:

“The next day was hard walking through the slush of snow, mud, and water—the night before, our officers had got hold of some Apple Jack. Lieutenant John Ball, who was marching with us, got pretty full of that, and, for some reason or another, he took a particular spite at me. He pointed with his saber where I should go back and forth, making me walk in the worst places he could until I became exhausted, and the boys began to murmur. Then Ball told Captain Pepper, the J.C., that I would not obey orders. The Captain sent for me. I told him how it was, and he told me to stay with him. I did so, but when we started to march again, I soon fell down exhausted, and the Captain took my gun and knapsack, put them in the wagon, and told me to get along as best I could. I was not able to walk on, but there was an old farmer who found me, and he took me in his buggy down nearly to camp. I got in that night. The next day, I was hauled in a wagon from Somerset until we got up with the regiment, and then I was put into an ambulance and hauled along with the company over two hundred miles of rocky roads. I tried during the trip to Bowling Green to march again but gave out in a little while and was never able to march anymore after that."

November 7 to December 26, 1862. Camp duty in Nashville.

“From Bowling Green, we went to Gallatin and got down into camp near Nashville. I remained with my company for some four or five weeks.  The regimental surgeon treated me until one evening, some of the boys went and told my captain I was sick and going to die. The captain told them to carry me to his tent. He sent me to hospital in Nashville. On December 6, the dropsy came on me. I swailled up all over, so this apparently was my Trouble. The day after Christmas, while I was in hospital, our army left Nashville to attack Bragg in his winter quarters at Stones River. Half my regiment died in that battle. On January 9, I was sent to hospital at Louisville, Kentucky, where I was able to go around a little, not much. I was walking across the room one day, and I felt my heart trouble come on me for the first time. I fell down and was helped onto my bed, and the doctors came and examined me. The next day, they told me it was my heart, and either I would be discharged home or die. On January 27 of ’63,  I was given a disability discharge, and I went home.”

He went home to meet my fifteen-year-old second great-grandmother, Maria Seward, whom he would marry and take to the Oregon Trail with her slightly older sister. His Army surgeon suggested Oregon's climate would be beneficial for his condition. They would make it to Oregon on horseback that season, but barely. They over-wintered in a place called Union, in Northeastern Oregon fewer than a hundred miles from this valley they liked so well they named it twice, up near the top of The Blue Mountains, in a lean-to. Maria's sister died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever there, and Alonzo and Maria had their first child there before returning East once Spring came. East to Rockford, Illinois where she worked as a seamstress.

Alonzo's Kenastons had been on this continent for about as long as Maria's Sewards. Both had over two centuries of experience here before their latest experienced war like none in either family had ever seen before. Alonzo's regiment had, by dumb luck, missed the Perryville battle that had decimated Buell's ranks, but the deprivation managed to find my forebear, anyway. He had contracted a bad cold as a child, which might have resulted in some undetected heart valve damage, but that marching in wet snow had shoved him over an edge. He undoubtedly suffered from rheumatic heart disease—his Trouble—for the rest of his short life. He and Maria would settle on a land claim in the Nebraska Territory's Sand Hills before finally making it to Oregon again, that time by train in eighteen eighty-six. Upon arrival, Alonzo finally succumbed to his Trouble in Lexington, Oregon, widowing Maria with six children aged six to fifteen. Maria would later meet up with a widower with a passel of children of his own and create a blended family. My great-grandparents from the Kenaston and Mayfield spokes would first meet as step-siblings in the relationship between Maria Seward Kenaston and Andrew Jackson Mayfield. History seems to happen exclusively by accident on purpose.

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