1st Cousin 4x removed of Dorotha Piechocki's husband, Jerry Piechocki

Private       Co. B      81st Reg't Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Dates of Service:  31 Aug 1861 - 21 Jun 1862

William H. Snyder was born in 1844, in Bath, Allen County, Ohio, the 3rd child of 8 born to Peter and Clarinda Edgecomb Snyder. By 1860, the family had moved to Shawnee Township, Allen County, where Peter was a farmer. The 16-year-old William helped his father farm. On August 31, 1861, when he was 17 years old, William enlisted in the 81st Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

The 81st OVI was originally organized in 1861 as "Morton's Independent Rifle Regiment" and mustered in for three years service under the command of Colonel Thomas Morton. Soon Federal officials assumed command of the organization, mustering the men into service as the 81st Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, Army of the Tennessee, to July 1862. William was part of the original Regiment.

On September 24, 1861, the 81st departed Benton Barracks for Herman, Missouri.  At Herman, the regiment endured constant drill and marches to prepare for the long year of battles and treks ahead of them. For a 17-year old farm boy, this was both easy and tedious.

Through November and December 1861, the 81st chased rogue Confederate forces around Calloway County, guarding the Danville railroad from Confederate guerrillas until March 1, 1862, when the organization returned to St. Louis.

After a brief stay at St. Louis, the 81st boarded the steamer Meteor and sailed to Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, disembarking on March 17, 1862. At this new location, the regiment joined the Second Brigade, Second Division of the Army of the Tennessee. 

On April 6, 1862, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnson's army launched a surprise attack against the Union force at Pittsburg Landing, an engagement soon known as the Battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing. Hearing the battle noises since early morning, it took several hours to march to the sound of the guns. A mile from the battle, the regiment was ordered to cover the Union Army's right flank by holding the bridge across Snake Creek while the rest of the division, led by General Lew Wallace, reinforced the retreating Union line. 

The 81st encountered their first real enemy force, a detachment of cavalry, at approximately 1:00 PM. The Ohioans quickly dispersed these Rebels with several volleys from their Springfields. General Ulysses S. Grant personally ordered the 81st to reinforce the center of the Union line and to engage the Confederates while the army regrouped. The 81st was also assigned to be a “straggler net” catching men who ran from the battle and folding them into the unit. The 81st marched beyond the Union line and took up an untenable position in a ravine. They were quickly ordered to return to the main Northern line under heavy enemy fire. A mile-long line of defense was formed with the 81st Ohio positioned in the center, studded with forty cannon and thousands of men. When the Confederates attacked at sundown they were badly repulsed.

On April 7, the battle resumed but this time it was the reinforced Union Army attacking an exhausted and depleted Confederate force. The 81st stormed a Confederate position, the first “charge” made by the regiment, but the Southerners forced the Ohioans to withdraw. The regiment launched a second attack, over the bodies of their fallen comrades, driving the Confederates from the field. On this day, the Union achieved a complete victory, with the 81st capturing an entire battery of Confederate artillery and a number of Rebel soldiers.

At the Battle of Shiloh's conclusion, the 81st's commanding officer issued the following report:

Up to that date, the Battle of Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing was the largest battle ever fought, larger than the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The population of both the North and South were dismayed at the high cost. It was said that “After Shiloh the South never smiled again.” It was quite a baptism of blood for young William and the 81st Ohio.

As a result of such high casualties General Grant was relieved of his command and was replaced by General Henry Halleck, also known as “Old Brains.” At the end of April 1862, Gen. Halleck’s powerful Army group of almost 125,000 men, set out from Pittsburg and Hamburg landings in Tennessee towards Corinth, Mississippi. A Confederate force of about half that size, under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard, waited for them, behind five miles of newly-constructed earthworks. Both commanders knew the importance of the coming battle. Halleck claimed that the railroad centers in Richmond, Virginia, and Corinth were “the greatest strategic points of the war, and our success at these points should be insured at all hazards.” Beauregard told his superiors: “If defeated here we will lose the Mississippi Valley and probably our cause . . . and our independence.”

Yet Halleck was cautious to a fault, and while moving the army toward the town of Corinth, Mississippi, he would march them only a mile a day, digging trenches day and night, crossing a series of low ridges covered with dense forests and cut by stream valleys and ravines. Eventually there were 40 miles of trenches. Moving his army through the rugged country while keeping it aligned along a 10-mile front was slow and difficult work. It took Halleck a month to travel the 22 miles to Corinth. 

The Confederates waiting in Corinth were well aware of Halleck’s slow, but constant, advance. By May 25th, the long Union line was entrenched on high ground within a few thousand yards of the Confederate fortifications. Union guns shelled the Confederate defensive earthworks, the supply base and railroad facilities in Corinth. Beauregard was outnumbered two to one. The water was bad. Typhoid and dysentery had felled thousands of his men. Beauregard saved his army by a hoax, giving some of the men three days’ rations and ordering them to prepare for an attack. As expected, one or two went over to the Union with that news. During the night of May 29th, the Confederate army moved out, using the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to carry the sick and wounded, the heavy artillery, and tons of supplies. 

When a train arrived, the troops cheered as though reinforcements were arriving. They set up dummy guns along the defensive earthworks, kept campfires burning, buglers and drummers played. The rest of the men slipped away undetected. When Union patrols entered Corinth on the morning of May 30th, they found the Confederates gone. The occupying troops spent most of the long, hot summer digging wells to find good water and building additional fortifications. 

During the siege, there were some 120,000 Union troops and 70,000 Confederate troops engaged. Each side had estimated casualties of about 1,000 men. It was likely during the month-long march to Corinth under a hot, humid Mississippi sun that William took ill, probably of typhoid fever caused by drinking infected water.

No records have been found indicating when he was sent home, only that he "died of disease at home in Lima, Ohio," on June 21, 1862. After surviving shot and shell for two days in the world's most ferocious battle, young William Snyder succumbed to a tiny bacteria in his drinking water. His body was laid to rest in Shawnee Cemetery, Lima, Allen County, on June 24, 1862, where his older brother Josiah would join him just five months later.