Benjamin Blosser - Civil War Soldier Buried in Farmer Cemetery

Ben was a member of the Lew Bowker Post.

Born about 1837, Benjamin Blosser was a Seneca County man, and there he married Nancy Zimmerman in 1859.  In the 1860 census, he lived in Jackson Township with his wife and their infant daughter, Rebecca J., 4 months.  Also with them was Elizabeth Zimmerman, 19.  Benjamin farmed then and throughout his lifetime.  

According to the 1890 census,  served in Company E, 186th O.V.I. from February 6, 1865, to September 18, 1865.  The company officially mustered out Sepember 25th. The regiment served in Tennessee and Georgia at the end of the war.  Benjamin enlisted when he was married and 27 years old.

After the war, he returned to Seneca County and by 1870, his family had expanded to include Rebecca J., 10, John J. 8, Daniel H., 6 and Ida E., 8 months.  In the censuses that asked, Benjamin reported that he could neither read nor write.  

The family could not be found in the 1880 census, but Benjamin reported himself on the 1890 census in Farmer Township, Defiance County.  In 1900, Benjamin was 63; he and Nancy had been married 41 years and had five children together, all living.  Only Ida E., 31 and single, lived with them, and she worked as a dining room waitress in the hotel, perhaps the Allen Hotel in Farmer.

Benjamin lived only three more years, until December 27, 1903.  Only a short death notice could be found for him as part of the Farmer community news in the Defiance Express on December 30, 1903.