Corporal Ernest Rietz, Company E

        ERNEST LEO RIETZ, a physician and surgeon at Black Creek, Wis., and a member of G. A. R. Post, No. 116, was born May 23, 1843, in Erfurt, Kingdom of Saxony, Germany, which was the birthplace of his parents and their ancestors. he came to America in 1861 and located in Wisconsin He enlisted August 16, 1862, in Company E, 26th Wisconsin Infantry, at Fond du Lac, for three years. He was promoted to Sergeant in October, 1864, and received honorable discharge June 27 1866, at Washington at the end of the war. The regiment was raised among the German population of Wisconsin and was one of twelve which General Sigel was authorized by the President to raise from the Germans of the Northern States. It left the State in October with a full muster of Germans with the exception of a part of Company G. The battles and skirmishes in which Dr. Rietz was engaged include 15 names and among them are Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. On the first day of the fight at the latter place, Dr. Rietz was wounded and was taken prisoner on the same day and sent to Belle Isle in the James River at Richmond and afterwards was confined at Libby. He remained in those places of unwholesome notoriety through July, August, and September and, about the first of October, in company with 54 other prisoners, escaped from Libby by tunneling.
Colonel Haberton was one of the party and the comrade of Dr. Rietz, and they had for rations about a half pint of flour. He and the colonel made their way into a swamp and mixed the flour with water and each ate half of it and he wishes it put on record that this was the most palatable meal of which he had ever partaken. They were five days in reaching Fortress. Monroe where they were transferred to the convalescent camp at Alexandria and they went to Washington where Dr. Rietz was sick with dysentery two weeks.
He joined his command in the Army of the Cumberland in time to light at Mission Ridge and afterwards skirmished at Buzzard Roost and Snake Creek Gap and was in the fight at Resaca. He was in the action at Cassville and New Hope Church and fought at Kenesaw, and in the battle of Peach Tree Creek afterwards participating in the siege of Atlanta. He was in the service of the 26th during the march through Georgia with Sherman and was in the siege of Savannah, fighting at Averysboro and at Bentonville going into camp at Goldsboro N. C., whence they proceeded to Raleigh and thence to Richmond after the surrender of Johnson and went to the Grand Review at Washington where he was discharged and returned to his home in Wisconsin. In 1868 he commenced the practice of medicine in the village of Sagole Outagamie county. The name of the place rendered in English means “good morning.” In 1887 he removed to Black Creek where he has since conducted his business as a physician.
Dr. Rietz was married August 29 1867 at Platteville, Wis. to Frederick Augusta Brodbeck and their children are named Robert Amalia and Oska and all are living. The mother died October 5 1884 of cancer. Dr. Rietz was married in July at Mount Sterling; Ia. to Mary Boemeke. The parents of the first wife were natives of Wurtemburg Germany. The father of the second wife was born in Hanover, Germany, and her mother if Pennsylvania.
Soldier’s and Citizen’s Album of Biographical Records, Grand Army Publishing Co. 1888 (Wisconsin Edition) pg. 354, 355