Hiram H. Hallock was born around 1842 in Canada. He immigrated to America sometime before 1860 and settled in Rockford, Illinois. By 1860, he was working as a laborer on a farm owned by Calvin Briggs. He enlisted in the Union army on August 4, 1862, and mustered in as a private in Company F of the 74th Illinois Infantry. According to his enlistment records, he was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, with brown hair and blue eyes. The regiment took part in the Battle of Perryville, the Battle of Stones River, and the siege of Chattanooga. He was shot in the head and killed in a skirmish near Dallas, Georgia, on May 28, 1864. His friend and messmate Charles Anderson mourned Hallock in a letter several days later, writing, “as a hero he leaved [lived] and a martyr he died on his Countrys altar.”