Wm. Linn Tidball
In one of your late Sunday morning issues you copied an article on Wm. Linn Tidball from the New York Advertiser. The errors in the article and the distinction which Col. Wm. Linn Tidball reached, as well as his genuine merits and real ability, and his residence in Mansfield in the years of his early manhood, make a more extended and more correct notice of him a proper thing to appear in the SHIELD. The older residents remember him. He was the son of Joseph Tidball and the brother-in-law of Judge Jno. Meredith and the brother of Captain Tidball, of the regular army. His father did not start nor have any connection with the SHIELD AND BANNER, but his brother-in-law, Judge Meredith, was the owner of the SHIELD and conducted it for some years prior to its purchase by the late Jno. Y. Glessner. Col. Tidball was christened William Duane Tidball but later in life took unto himself the name of William Linn. He was, for his opportunities, a scholarly man, a forcible writer, and was in his days associated with such brilliant men as Wm. D. Gallagher and other western literati in the conduct of the "Columbian", a literary publication of the west. He was a lieutenant in one of the Mansfield companies of the Third Regiment, of Ohio Volunteers in the Mexican war, commanded by Col. Sam'l. R. Curtis, who, after his graduation from West Point and after a brief service in the army, was a resident of Mansfield. Tidball was a student at law, and some years after the Mexican war removed to New York City and continued there to reside and when the war of the rebellion made loyal men see the necessity for their service he enlisted, raised a regiment, the 59th. N.Y., and with it went to the field. In his regiment were many sons of old Richland, in fact one company was made up of the Buckeye boys and N.L. Jeffries, also a brother-in-law, was the adjutant of the regiment. After the war he engaged in professional and literary work. He was much of a man; in person straight as an arrow, a very Apollo in form and face, brave, courageous, manly, and Richland County may well take pride in his career. In the Third Ohio in the Mexican war there was another brother, Theo. T. Tidball, who settled in California, and was in the Union army during the war of the rebellion, serving in the California contingent. Few now are the survivors of the Ohio soldiery in the Mexican war. We can almost county them on the fingers of our hands. While the merits of that war are debatable grounds, and on which good men greatly differed, the outcome of it gave us our Pacific empire, a goodly land which greatly extended our country and its importance amongst the nations of the earth. One by one the soldiers of the Republic disappear from mortal sight to reappear in the land of light, where war's alarms are never hears.
From The Richland Shield & Banner, March 4, 1893