SAVANNAH — The only person from Ashland County to have ever won a Congressional Medal of Honor was known as “The Fighting Chaplain.”
Milton Lorenzi Haney received the highest award for military valor in action that the United States can bestow for his actions during the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864.
Haney survived the Civil War, living to the ripe old age of 96. He died of pneumonia in 1922 and is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California.
Background
His father, James Haney, became a beloved preacher when the large family lived in Savannah.
James emigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania in 1796 when he was 15 years old. At age 20, he married Hannah Freeborn. They lived on various farms in Pennsylvania. He taught school during winters.
At one point while living in western Pennsylvania, the Rev. Valentine Cook, a Methodist “foremost preacher of his day,” converted James.
In 1815, at age 39, he and his wife and eight children moved to Ashland County. He traveled to Ohio with four others via a keel-boat they built in Washington County, Pennsylvania, where they lived.
They put all their families and household goods on the boat and floated on the Ohio River and up the Muskingum and its tributaries as far as they could, landing near the present site of Jeromesville, on Jerome Fork.
They then transported their goods and families to their future home in (Clear Creek Township), through the woods, and on pack animals, according to an account on the history of Clear Creek Township.
Over the next 19 years, Haney served as Savannah’s first well-loved and respected clergyman. He also served as the village’s first Justice of the Peace and had terms in the Ohio Legislature. He was known to travel 15 to 20 miles for preaching appointments around the area and also founded the First Methodist Society in Hudson County.
James’ first wife, Hannah, died in August 1821 while giving birth to the couple’s 12th child. He remarried three years later to Mary Bevans and had two more children: Milton (1825) and Henry (1827).
In a book he wrote in 1903, Milton Haney credited his mother as the “greatest human factor leading to his salvation.”
In 1834 he moved the family to Fulton County, Illinois, possibly to be closer to some of his children, who had moved to the state chasing opportunities to own land.
By the time they moved to Illinois, Milton was 9 or 10 years old. By 21, the young Milton was appointed as junior preacher of the Dixon, Illinois, Circuit and quickly expanded his preaching in churches and camp meetings throughout the Midwestern states.
He entered the U.S. Army at Bushnell, Illinois as a captain in charge of Company F, 55th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment in October 1861 after helping the army enlist men for the war. Those men, around 100 of them, elected him to be their captain
Five months later, in March 1862, however, the reverend was asked to set aside his commanding duties to serve as chaplain of the regiment.
Two years later, during the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864, Haney picked up a musket. According to the National Medal of Honor Museum (NMHM), Haney “joined the ranks of the regiment, fighting to retake a Union breastwork that had recently fallen to the Confederate forces.”
The National Archives states the fall of Atlanta to Federal forces was “instrumental in the eventual victory” for the North.
“It boosted morale in the North and insured the reelection of President Abraham Lincoln which meant that the war would continue to the South’s capitulation,” reads an article in the National Archives.
Three others in the unit also eventually won Medal of Honors for their valor that day in Atlanta, but only Haney became known as “The Fighting Chaplain.”
Milton remains one of nine chaplains to ever be awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor.
“The records state that he was renowned for his ‘great personal bravery’ and ‘his zealous performance of professional duties,’” reads NMHM’s account of Haney.
Haney was married to Sarah Catherine Huntsinger Haney, though it is unclear what year they wed. The couple did not have children. She died two years before her husband, in 1922 at age 88.
