According to my father, another amateur genealogist, William Henry King was homesteading in Independence, Kansas not serving with the Grand Army of the Republic. Additionally, the GAR was a social fraternity for Union veterans of the Civil War.
Whoops.
I think I saw somewhere (and now I can't find where -- dratted memory loss) that W.H. King was involved with GAR post #4, named after General James B. McPherson, causing my earlier assumption.
The GAR was founded in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, and included hundreds of "posts" in every state and even a few overseas. Its highest membership was 410,000, but it ended by 1956 when its last known member died.
W.H. King and his family, was shown in the 1870 US census as a farmer in Brush Creek township, Scioto County, Ohio. Apparently W.H. King took advantage of his possible signing bonus for the 53rd OVI and moved his wife Angeline and toddler son Horace out to Independence, Kansas.
According to my father, at some point a previously unknown to me child (it wasn't Horace and it wasn't Franklin) was bitten by a rattlesnake and died, causing the entire family to return to Ohio by 1874. That is where his first wife Angeline died in 1874 and buried in her family cemetery in Brush Creek township, Scioto County.
Just what happened to that poor family within a span of four years?
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