Boy Colonel, Jerome Davis: Great Man of Faith and Valor

A short article on a man whose life may have otherwise been too soon forgotten.

From the Courier-News

Known to his friends back in the Dundees as “the boy colonel,” Jerome Davis enlisted on the outbreak of the Civil War as a private in the 52nd Illinois Volunteers regiment. During the Battle of Shiloh, where the regiment lost 170 out of 500 men, he won a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant.

 While bearing the regimental colors, Davis received a severe wound in the thigh. Comrades gave him as much crude first aid as they could, but he lost consciousness and was left on the field for dead. Later he was moved to a steamship, where he lay on the deck for two days before his wound was properly dressed. But he recovered and during the Atlanta campaign and the March to the Sea, he progressed through the ranks until reaching the rank of colonel at age 26. As a “boy colonel,” he led the 52nd in the Grand Review that celebrated Union victory at Washington on May 24, 1865. 

After the war, Davis graduated from Beloit College and entered Chicago Theological Seminary. After graduating from the seminary in 1869, he and his wife, Sophia Strong, moved to Cheyenne, Wyo., where they took on the work of “pioneer missionaries.” Two years later they sailed to Japan, being only the third family to enter that land as missionaries under the American flag.

 Col./Rev. Davis spent almost 40 years of his life in Japan, where he died Nov. 4, 1910.

— Courtesy Dundee Township Historical Society