John F. Crysler - updated 11/25/08

John F. Crysler was born in 1842 in Ontario, Canada, the son of Jeremiah (1811-1887) and Rhoda Matilda (Ford, 1820)

Ontario, Canadian natives Jeremiah and Rhoda were married on April 20, 1841, in Ontario, Canada and resided there for many years. Sometime between 1843 and 1844 (or possibly as late as 1852) they left Canada and eventually settled in Michigan. By 1860 John was attending school with five of his younger siblings and living on the family farm in Sparta, Kent County. (Nearby lived Levi Tanner who would also enlist in the Third Michigan.)

John was a 20-year-old farmer probably living in Sparta, Kent County when he enlisted with his father’s consent in Company K on August 9, 1862, at Grand Rapids for 3 years, and joined the Regiment on September 8 at Upton’s Hill, Virginia. He died of typhoid fever on May 31 or June 1, 1863, and, according to George Bailey, of Company F who had been temporarily assigned as Regimental hospital steward, he died in the Regimental hospital at Falmouth, Virginia. (He may have been buried initially on the Bullard Farm in Stafford County, Virginia.) John was eventually interred in Fredericksburg National Cemetery: grave no. 5021 (old 127).

His parents soon left Michigan and by 1870 had settled in Marine Mills, Washington County, Minnesota. By 1880 they had moved to Big Bend, Republic County, Kansas where Jeremiah died in 1887. (He is buried in Rose Mound Cemetery in Big Bend.) In 1888 John’s mother Rhoda mother was living in Nebraska when she applied for and received a pension (no. 248,775). Sometime between 1900 and 1910 Rhode went to live with her daughter Florence Vickers, in Billings, Montana. She died in Billings in 1914 and her body was sent to White Bear Lake, Ramsey County, Minnesota and buried at Saint John’s cemetery in White Bear Lake. (Apparently her daughter Hester or Esther had settled there with her husband William Freeman.)