Samuel Kessler Huntsinger was born on January 28, 1843, in Indiana to Levi and Rachel Huntsinger. His father was a lawyer who owned $100 of real estate by 1850. He grew up and attended school in Camden, Indiana. By the early 1860s, he was living in Rockfield, Indiana.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on July 16, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company A of the 72^nd Indiana Infantry. The regiment took part in the Tullahoma campaign, the Battle of Chickamauga, and the Atlanta campaign. On April 2, 1865, he celebrated the “Grandest victory of the war,” writing, “Selma captured. Charged the Rebles and drove them from there Breastworks. Captured several hund[red] prisnors.” A month later, on May 1, 1865, he rejoiced that “this cruel war is over.”

 

He married Sarah Mills on May 10, 1871, and they had at least four children: Grace, born around 1877; Alice, born around 1881; Ruth, born around 1887; and Edward, born around 1892. They lived in Boone, Iowa, and Huntsinger worked as a railroad clerk. They moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in the 1880s. He applied for a federal pension in August 1906 and eventually secured one. He died in Lincoln on December 12, 1913.

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