George Washington Zinn
George Washington Zinn was born in Preston County, West Virginia, on 25 February 1845. Preston County lies along the Pennsylvania line, and in the Civil War he served in a Pennsylvania regiment, the 107th Pennsylvania Infantry.
He went to the war as a substitute. Under the draft laws of the Civil War, a man whose name was drawn could send another man to serve in his place. On 7 September 1864, at 19, George was mustered into Company A of the 107th as a private, for one year, as a substitute. The regiment was then in the lines before Petersburg, Virginia, where the Union armies held Robert E. Lee's army under siege. Three weeks before he joined, on 19 August 1864, the company had lost men at the Weldon Railroad, south of Petersburg, where many of the regiment were captured.
On 6 February 1865 the 107th was in the fighting at Dabney's Mill, on Hatcher's Run, southwest of Petersburg, as the Union army pushed west to cut the roads that supplied Lee's army. George was wounded there. He was discharged by general order on 6 June 1865, two months after Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
He came home to Preston County and drew a federal pension as a wounded Union veteran. In December 1897 the government raised it from $10 to $12 a month, and the notice lists him as George W. Zinn of Reedsville.
He married Jane Turner, called Margaret Jane, who was born in the county in 1847. Their son George Lanham Zinn named them both on his own death certificate in 1967. They raised a large family near Reedsville. Their memorials list Caleb Dorsey (1867), James Samuel (1871), Emery Jackson (1874), Daniel Fay (1879), Mason Warren (1883), George Lanham (1885), Orville McKinley (1888), Lillie Ethel (1891) and Margaret May (1895). His memorial gives his own parents as Samuel Zinn and Mary Johnson.
He died in Preston County on 27 May 1923, aged 78. He is buried at Gordon Cemetery, near Reedsville, under a government stone cut for Union soldiers that reads "Geo. W. Zinn, Co. A, 107 Pa. Inf."
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Cite: Heirology, "George Washington Zinn (1845-1923)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/george-washington-zinn-1845-1923-76d4f8.