Joseph H. Knutson was a private in Company C, Sixth Regiment, Illinois Militia, as was Carl Sandburg. He was born October 28, 1871, the son of Nels and Betsy Knutson. The reason Joe enlisted in the army during the Spanish-American War may have been because his father served in the Civil War.

 

Nels Knutson came to America in 1853 at the age of 21 from the Province of Christianstad, Sweden. He worked as a laborer on a farm near Galesburg. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Nels helped organize Company C of the 43^rd Illinois Infantry. The regiment was mustered in at Camp Butler near Springfield on September 1, 1861. Nels was appointed sergeant of the company. There were 83 men from Knox County in the regiment.

 

Like many other regiments from Illinois, the 43^rd was involved in the battles at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson and Shiloh in Tennessee during February and March 1862. Those were some of the bloodiest battles on the western front. Two hundred men of the 43^rd  were killed or wounded at Shiloh. On March 2, 1862, Knutson was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. He was mustered out of service February 28, 1865, as his enlistment had expired.

 

Nels Knutson married Betsy Swanson while he was on leave in the spring of 1864. She was also born in Sweden. They had thirteen children, ten of whom survived to maturity. After leaving the Army, Nels clerked in a grocery store in Galesburg. In 1866 the family moved to Iowa to farm. They returned to Galesburg in 1875. Mr. Knutson worked for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad until his health failed. The family lived at 268 North Pearl Street, not far from the Sandburg family home on Berrien Street.

 

The elder Knutson died March 30, 1896, and was buried in Hope Cemetery. He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic (the Civil War veterans organization) which conducted the burial service. His obituary stated “He was a good husband and kind father, and he was an enthusiastically patriotic man.” Betsy Knutson died July 3, 1917, and was laid to rest next to her husband.

 

Young Joseph Knutson served the entire two-year term of his enlistment. In addition to his time in Cuba and Puerto Rico he was stationed at St. Augustine Barracks in the Philippines. After returning to Galesburg, he worked at a variety of jobs and lived with his mother until her death. He was a porter in a sample room, a laborer for a plumbing company and a blacksmith at the gas company.

 

In his autobiography, Always the Young Strangers, Carl Sandburg describes Joe as “a silent man, the hardest-drinking man in Company C, and he never failed on a march or an assigned duty. He was one of the few men I had picked who in a real battle would likely have won a medal for valor.”

 

Joe Knutson spent the last years of his life at the Soldiers and Sailors Home (now the Illinois Veterans Home) in Quincy. He died December 7, 1945. Pastor Raye L. Ragan of the First Methodist Church presided at the funeral. The local camp of the Spanish-American War veterans conducted the burial   rites with Commander E.J. Corbin and Chaplain W.E. Hammerstrom officiating. The pallbearers, all members of the camp, were C.J. Rose, E.C. Reed, Gust Lind, J.M. Spillman, DeWitt Crawford and M.J. Neilon.

 

Then he was laid to rest in a patriot's grave at Linwood Cemetery.