Woodruff, Henry

Newspaperman, Civil War Veteran

Birth: October 20, 1836, Vienna, Trumbull County, Ohio
Death: August 6, 1904, Franklin Park, Cook County, Illinois
Burial: Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
Find a Grave memorial

Military Service: Enlisted as a Private, 85st Regiment, Company B, Ohio Volunteer Infantry (National Guard), 27 May 1862. Mustered out 27 September 1862.

Vienna-born Henry Woodruff generally went west after he left the Township to follow his career as a newspaper editor. As a 15-year-old he apprenticed as a printer in Salem, Ohio, at the Anti-Slavery Bugle, an important abolitionist newspaper. There he may have met the movement's leaders: S. C. and Abby Kelly Foster, William Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, and Sojourner Truth all made Salem their headquarters on their lecture tours. Woodruff returned to Warren to work in printing and finished high school there, and then moved to Tallmadge, Ohio. After his 3-month enlistment during the Civil War, he attended the Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, graduating at age 28 with the Class of 1865. On 17 September 1865 he married Cordelia Kilbourn(e) in Hudson.

The couple spent some time in Geneseo, New York, and Cleveland, Ohio, before settling in St. Paul, Minnesota, in July 1867. There Woodruff worked at the Daily Press. In December 1874 Woodruff moved his family--now including three children--to Decorah, Iowa, where he became the editor of the Decorah Journal.

Henry Woodruff's brother Willis W. Woodruff served in the 85th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

Regimental History, 85th Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Overview: Organized at Camp Chase for three months' service May-June, 1862. Zinn's Battalion moved to Kentucky and participated in operations against Morgan July, 1862. Prison guard at Camp Chase, Ohio, till September. Zinn's Battalion moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and participated in the operations for the defence of that city against Kirby Smith's threatened attack August-September. Mustered out September 23 and September 27, 1862.

Lost during service by disease 10 Enlisted men.