Tombstone Tuesday - Levi Allman

Yesterday I posted about William Allman, my third-great-grandfather. I believe his younger brother was Levi Allman (uncle of my second-great-grandmother Agnes Lydia Allman). Private Levi Allman is buried in Raleigh National Cemetery in Wake County, North Carolina. He died on 2 April 1865, of wounds sustained at the Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina on 21 March 1865 (the headstone reads 21 April 1865, but this is apparently an error).

Photo credit - Cheryl Behrend via Findagrave.com

Levi Allman was born between 1839-1842 in Carroll County, Ohio. He moved west to Illinois, joining his older brother William in Vermilion County. Both worked as farm laborers for members of the large Davis family in Vance Township.

Levi joined the 125th Illinois Infantry on 1 August 1862. He mustered into Company C on 3 September 1862. The story of the 125th has been preserved by several men who served in this regiment during the Civil War. One such volume is available on Archive.org, written by Robert M. Rogers, a sergeant in Company B (see http://archive.org/details/125thregimentill00roge).

The 125th saw action from Perryville, Kentucky, through Tennessee, and became part of General Sherman's Atlanta Campaign and the famous March to the Sea. Until this week, I did not realize that I had a personal connection through a distant uncle to Sherman's campaigns in the Civil War.

The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources maintains an informational page on the Bentonville Campaign. Allman was likely treated for wounds at Harper House, which was used as a battlefield hospital.

There is much more to the story of the 125th and the various battles with General Sherman. Levi Allman served for nearly three years, and likely missed surviving the war by several weeks. Sherman's southern campaigns contributed to the end of the Civil War, and it is very interesting to know that an ancestor took part in those battles.