Lieutenant Colonel Orrin J. Crane.
Orrin J. Crane was born in Troy, New York, in 1829. When he was three years old his parents removed to Vermont, where his father died soon after, leaving his wife and children poorly provided for. Young Crane was taken, whilst still a small boy, by an uncle, and about the year 1852, he came in charge of his relative to Conneaut, where he worked as a mechanic. He left Conneaut at one time for the Isthmus of Panama, where he spent a year, and on returning found work as a ship carpenter in Cleveland, where he became connected with one of the military organizations of the city.
At the fall of Sumter he entered the service as first-lieutenant in Captain Creighton's company; and on his promotion, was made captain. He early devoted himself to the instruction of his company; and it can be said that it lost nothing of the efficiency it acquired under the leadership of Creighton.
After the regiment entered the field, his services were invaluable. If a bridge was to be constructed, or a road repaired, he was sent for to superintend it. If the commissary department became reduced, he was the one to procure supplies. No undertaking was too arduous for his iron-will to brave. All relied on him with the utmost confidence, and no one was ever disappointed in him.
At the affair at Cross Lanes, where he first came under fire, he behaved with great valor, and inspired his men with true courage. They stood like a wall, and fell back only when ordered by their leader, then dashed through the strong lines of the enemy, and were brought off with safety out of what was seemingly certain destruction. He kept his men well together during the long march to Gauley Bridge.
After his arrival at that point he was sent out to the front, up New River, where he rendered valuable service. He was in every march and skirmish in both Western and Eastern Virginia, until the battle of Winchester. In this engagement he showed the same indomitable courage. He held his men to the work of carnage so fearfully, that the enemy's slain almost equalled his command.
He shared in every battle in which his regiment was engaged in the East; Port Republic, Cedar Mountain (where he was slightly wounded), Antietam, Dumfries, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. In all of these he never sent his men forward; he led them on.
At the battle of Antietam, he commanded the regiment, and during the latter part of the engagement, a brigade. Before the regiment left for the West, he was made lieutenant-colonel; a position which his ability and long, as well as faithful, service of his country rendered him eminently qualified to fill.
Arriving at the West, he commanded the regiment in the battles of Lookout Mountain and Mission Ridge, where he added new laurels to his already imperishable name. At fatal Ringgold, he again commanded the regiment. He led it up the steep ascent, where the whistling of bullets made the air musical; and where men dropped so quietly that they were scarcely missed, except in the thinned ranks of the command. The regiment had not recovered from the shock produced by the announcement of the death of Creighton, when Crane himself fell dead at the feet of his comrades, pierced through the forhead by a rifle bullet. He fell so far in the advance, that his men were driven back before possessing themselves of his body but it was soon after recovered, and shared with the remains of Colonel Creighton the honors of a public funeral.