Joseph Lincoln was born on January 17, 1836, in Ohio to Abram and Ruth Lincoln. His father was a farmer who owned $3,500 of real estate by 1850. Lincoln grew up in Wayne, Ohio, and by 1850, he was working as a laborer on his father’s farm. He enlisted in the Union army on August 11, 1862, and mustered in as a private in Company H of the 79^th Ohio Infantry. The regiment spent the next year and a half stationed in Kentucky and Tennessee, and Lincoln was promoted to corporal on March 9, 1863. In the final year of the war, however, the men took part in General William T. Sherman’s Atlanta campaign, the March to the Sea, and the Carolinas campaign. Lincoln mustered out in Washington, D.C., on June 9, 1865. He passed away soon after the war, on February 21, 1866.

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