In Memoriam N. B. R.

Come all you laboring hands that toil below,
Among the rocks and sands, that plow and sow;
Upon your hired lands, let out by cruel hands,
'Twill make you large amends to Rutland go.

Although a Illinois native, Nathan B. Rowley, great-grandson of Vermont poet, town official and Revolutionary War veteran of the militia brigade called the Green Mountain Boys, Thomas Rowley, joined the 8th Missouri Volunteer Infantry at St. Louis, Missouri on June 26, 1861.

Such was his commitment to maintaining the Union that, like many of that time whose home regiments soon met their state quotas during the initial call for arms in the weeks after the attack by Confederates on the Union at Fort Sumter, he, like so many from the Peoria, Illinois area, found opportunity to serve in the 8th Missouri Volunteer Infantry.

He was killed in the US Civil War on May 22, 1863, during the siege of Vickburg.

"I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

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