July 20, 2026
On February 8, 1882 the body of Richard Anderson was found on the tracks at Sparta with head and right arm severed. He had come from Viroqua the day before for a medical examination for an increase in his pension. After the examination, according to some accounts, he spent several hours in Sparta taverns and purchased alcohol. In the evening he entered the telegraph office at the depot and requested to spend the night which was not allowed. Sometime around midnight it is suspected that he was run over by a freight train.
Richard “Dick” Anderson was born in Ireland in 1831. Anderson enlisted in the 4th U.S. Infantry in 1856 and was part of the expedition that marched under Albert Sidney Johnston from the Missouri River to the Salt Lake in 1857 to establish U.S. control in Utah, suppressing the Mormon Insurrection. In 1858 his company was ordered to New Mexico and established Fort Garland, thence to Arizona where they remained until the spring of 1861. The company was then marched to Texas where the officers took an oath of service to the Confederacy. All of the enlisted men refused to take the oath and instead returned to Benton Barracks, St. Louis where they served out the terms of their enlistments. Dick was mustered out at St. Louis and returned home where he married Mary Reinke in November 1862. He enlisted in the 17th Wisconsin Regiment, serving until the end of the conflict. During his service he contracted chronic diarrhea and also suffered from loss of hearing and other faculties and was thereafter only capable of light work. He received a pension for his service. He and wife Mary and their eight children, the oldest born in 1866, lived in a one room log house in Harrison Hollow Valley, Town of Kickapoo, Readstown. His youngest child, Katie was born the October following his death. After his death the Pension Bureau ruled against his widow, claiming his death was not a result of the disease for which he was pensioned.
In 1886 Congress unanimously passed a bill to place the widow on the pension roll for $12. In July of that year President Cleveland vetoed 74 pensions including Mary Anderson’s. In Richard’s case the ruling was that he had suicided therefore making her ineligible for a pension. A vote later in July to overturn the veto failed to meet the two thirds majority (119 to 195) needed to overturn a veto. A Sept. 18, 1886 editorial in the Vernon County Censor notes proof from “a prominent member of the railroad company that Anderson had no bottle of liquor on his person when found; that the bottle was placed in his clothing to relieve the company from damage.” Following the veto a local campaign created a Widow Anderson Fund to help support the Anderson family. Mary Anderson died on January 7, 1894.
On July 18th 2026, Richard Anderson was honored with a memorial ceremony and had his headstone set next to his wife Mary at the Manning Cemetery, Town of Kickapoo, may he rest in peace.
Commander Dan Chroninger of the L.G. Armstrong Camp #49, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) based in the Grand Army of the Republic Hall (GAR Hall) in Boscobel, Wis., would like to thank the following for their assistance in making this possible, the Veterans Administration, Vernon County Veterans Service office, Krause Monuments, Manning Cemetery Board, Jim Griesel, Kevin Chroninger, Timothy Bennish of L.G. Armstrong Camp #49, Jeff Graf and Brian McManus, Col. Hans Heg, Camp #15
Add comment