Kinney, George R

George Kinney

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Significance:

Company C, 155th Illinois Infantry

Place of Birth:

Crawford County, Illinois

Date of Birth:

1847

Place of Death:

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Date of Death:

June 30th, 1865

Place of Burial:

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Cemetery Name:

Stones River National Cemetery

George R. Kinney was born in Crawford County, Illinois in 1847 and was 18 by the time he entered the Union army in 1865. The Illinois Descriptive Roster described Kinney as standing at 5 feet 8 inches with light hair and hazel eyes and being of light complexion. Kinney worked as a farmer in Hutsonville, IL and was not married at the time of mustering into service.

Kinney enlisted in Company C of the 155th Illinois Infantry on February 11, 1865, at Olney, Illinois, for a one‑year term. The regiment organized at Camp Butler under Colonel Gustavus A. Smith before moving south in early March. Traveling through Louisville and Nashville, the 155th arrived at Tullahoma, Tennessee, where it took up duties typical of late‑war regiments: protecting vital rail lines. On June 17, companies were broken into small detachments and posted along a fifty‑mile stretch of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, manning blockhouses from Nashville to Duck River.

Although the regiment itself would muster out on September 4, 1865, Private Kinney’s service ended earlier and unexpectedly. On June 30, 1865, he died in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the circumstances of his death unrecorded. Today, he rests in Stones River National Cemetery in plot G‑2826. 

Tags: stones river national battlefield, stones river national cemetery, american civil war