Access Vermillion County

Henry Washburn's parents moved to Wayne County, Ohio, in the year of his birth, and it was there that he lived until 1850. His public school education was interrupted at the age of 13, when he was apprenticed to a tanner, but that trade was not to his liking and he abandoned it to become a school teacher.

		It was while he was teaching at Helt's Prairie, near Clinton, Ind., that he met Miss Serena Nebeker of that town at a spelling bee. Serena went on to the Edgar Academy at Paris, Ill., for "finishing," then taught school for a time on the Grand Prairie while Henry took some preparatory work at Oberlin College and obtained a degree at the New York State and National Law School.

He was able to open a law office in Newport, Ind., in 1854, and he and Serena were married December 28 at the home of her parents. The young couple made their home at Newport where four children were born in the years before the Civil War. During that time Washburn supplemented his legal practice by serving as Vermillion County Auditor.

At the onset of war in 1861, he raised a company of volunteers at Terre Haute and was elected their captain. His unit became Company C, 18th Regimens of Indiana Volunteer Infantry. Before the regiment was mustered into Federal service on Aug. 16, 1861, Henry D. Washburn received the Governor's commission as its lieutenant colonel.

The 18th Indiana served in the Missouri campaigns under Generals Fremont and Hunter, receiving a battlefield commendation for recapturing the guns of a Peoria battery at the Battle of Pea Ridge. The regiment also campaigned in Arkansas, where Washburn became its colonel on July 15, 1862. Under his leadership, the 18th Indiana served at the siege of Vicksburg, where the exposure incident to trench life initiated that wasting consumption that contributed to his early death. Further campaigning under General Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley led to a brevet rank of brigadier general on Dec. 15, 1864. He was mustered out of the Army at Savannah, Ga., July 26, 1865, with the brevet rank of major general, given in recognition of his "gallant and meritorious service during the war."

General Washburn's service papers describe him as 6 feet tall, with blue eyes, light complexion, and light hair, and it is evident from photographs taken of him after the war that he was sparely built, but of a very commanding appearance.

While yet in the army, General Washburn was pressed to run for the seat in the national House of Representatives held by Daniel W. Voorhees. He took leave to campaign in Indiana and was successful at the polls despite the election frauds charged to the opposition. Following the war he was able to occupy his seat in the House, to which he was reelected. But the labors of his office were so destructive of his war-ravaged health that he refused to run for a third term and applied to President Grant for the position of Surveyor General for Montana Territory in the hope that life in the West would restore his vigor. The other contender for that office was Col. Philetus W. Norris, of Michigan, but General Washburn received the appointment Apr. 17, 1869.

Surveyor General Washburn started for Montana in May with his wife, two children, and several relatives. They boarded the steamer Submarine No. 14 at St. Louis, with household goods and a grand piano, arriving at Fort Buford, near the mouth of the Yellowstone, 1 month and 2 days later. Here they transferred to the light-draught steamer Lacon for the remainder of the voyage to Fort Benton, but the low stage of the water in the upper Missouri prevented the boat from reaching Cow Island. After 3 weeks of fruitless toil over numerous sandbars, they turned back. On the return trip they were snagged" and had to defend a sunken boat from Indian attack while laboring on short rations to refloat it. Rescued by their own resources alone, crew and passengers brought the boat back to Omaha on August 6.

The Washburns had accomplished nothing except the loss of their household goods by their voyage of 70 days, so Henry decided to go on to Helena alone while the others returned to their Indiana homes. He completed the journey by way of the newly built Union Pacific Railroad to Corinne, Utah, and from thence by bone-jolting stagecoach northward into Montana. His arrival in the Territory in company with Governor Ashley and Senator Lyman Trumbull was noted by Thomas H. Canfield, who characterized them as "all good N.P.R.R. men."

In 1870, General Washburn was gradually involved in events that led to the Yellowstone expedition, for which he proved to be the ideal leader. As Cornelius Hedges later pointed out, he was able to unify and guide a potentially fractious party composed of men "each of whom considered himself a host; all unusually self sufficient and self reliant, and singularly disposed to individual judgment," and he did so "with no articles of war to aid in the enforcement of discipline, which was still so essential to the general success and individual safety." His natural ability as a leader, coupled with uniform and impartial consideration for others, and his constant willingness to take up a load, brought the party through with credit.

For General Washburn the strain was too great. A cold caught while searching for the lost Truman C. Everts in miserable weather south of Lake Yellowstone advanced his lingering consumption, so that he was forced by ill health to start for his home in Indiana early in January 1871. And yet, despite his illness, he was able to write an account of the Yellowstone adventure which the New York Times commended as distinguished by its "graphic directness and unpretending eloquence," noting that "rarely do descriptions of nature come to our hands so unaffectedly expressed."

Washburn arrived at the home of his father-in-law, Aquilla Nebeker, in Clinton, Ind., after what must have been a harrowing trip. There, he was put to bed and given all the care that could be had; yet he lived only a few days. He was buried in Clinton in a ceremony conducted by the Knights Templar. In time a letter arrived, signed by all the employees of his office at Helena, saying simply that he "fulfilled all the duties of his official position in a manner which has endeared him to us all." It was typical of the man.

Source: Washburn family papers in the Yellowstone Park Reference Library.