Source: Proceedings in the House of Representatives
Announcement of Death – 7 Aug. 1893 – William H. Enochs, a Representative the death of my distinguished colleague, William H. Enochs, a Representative from the State of Ohio, who died at his home in the city of Ironton, Ohio, in the early morning of July 13, last.
…William H. Enochs was born in Noble County, Ohio 29 March 1893. Of his parents, I knew but little, and that only by common report. There are people in moderate or possibly poor circumstances, and the boy was compelled to work on the farm in aid of this father and to secure a living for himself. The father and mother of Enochs are said to have been persons possessing more than ordinary strength of character. They were of pious minds and very industrious and upright people.
Young Enochs made good headway in the schools which he attended, being for the early years of his student life simply the common schools of Lawrence County, Ohio, to which section his parents had removed. He taught school, and with the proceeds of that employment attended the Ohio University at Athens, at my home. The impression he made upon the people of my town and upon the faculty of the college was that Enochs was a handsome, well-behaved, ambitious young man with country manners and country tendencies.
William H. Enochs was a student at Ohio University in the spring of 1861 when the war broke out. In giving his early experience he was in the habit of saying that when the war began he followed the first fife and drum that came along.
The notes of that fife and drum are still sounding in my memory. It was on the evening of the Sunday following the attack upon Fort Sumter that the first meeting to express the opinion of that college town upon the great subject of rebellion and war was held in the town of Athens, and young Enochs was there. I still remember the glow on his face and the light in his eye as the news from Washington was read and resolutions to contribute to men and money were adopted.
Very shortly afterward, he enlisted in the Twenty-second Ohio Volunteers for three months. That Regiment, like many others from Ohio, was organized under the Seward theory of a ninety day’s termination of the war, but long before the end of the ninety days it was plainly visible to the intelligent eye that we had embarked on a war of years, and the young soldier reenlisted at Ceredo, WV, in the Fifth West Virginia Volunteers, in Company K.
As a soldier, he was a dashing soldier. I never heard that he made plans of action, but I have heard that he always acted. He became a lieutenant in December 1861, and on 19 April 1863, he was promoted to captain of Company E, and on 17 Aug. 1863, he became lieutenant-colonel, which rank he held until 19 Dec. 1864, when he was promoted to colonel of the First WV Regiment, into which the Fifth and Ninth had been consolidated. This position he held until the close of the war, and after the war Colonel Enochs was brevetted brigadier-general in honor of his honorable services on the field.
William H. Enochs studied law after the war and graduated from the Cincinnati Law School in 1866. He began the practice of law in WV, but after about a year he removed to Ironton, where he lived the remainder of his life.
In the latter years of his law practice he devoted much time to railroad practice, and in that connection was an industrious, energetic, enterprising, and ambitious lawyer.
He was elected to the legislature of Ohio in 1869 and served a single term and voluntarily withdrew from politics for the time being.
He was a candidate for Congress in 1888, but failed to receive the nomination; but in 1890, after one of the most exciting struggles ever known in that section of Ohio, he was nominated for Congressman. The district had been newly formed. It consisted of the counties of Athens, Meigs, Lawrence, Gallia, and Scioto.
Mr. Speaker, I attended William H. Enochs’ funeral at Ironton. On a beautiful Sunday we assembled at the home he loved so well and witnessed the ceremonies incident to that solemn occasion…[this goes on for a total of 60 pages]
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