Private Oviel Edgar Greenlee

 Oviel was born to George W. and Sarah Greenlee in 1894. He grew up in the little farming community of Kurtz, Indiana. He is my first cousin, twice removed, his aunt Lucinda being my great grandmother (on my mother's side).

Oviel registered for the draft in June of 1917. He was an unmarried 24 year old who had been working with a railroad gang, laying track for the Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville Railroad. A side note: what I found most interesting about this registration was the tab in the bottom left corner.


See that? "If person is of African descent, tear off this corner."

Note also that on line 12 ("Do you claim exemption from draft (specify grounds)?"), is written the words "physical disability." I wonder what that was? In any case, the exemption was not accepted as valid and Oviel was scooped up by Uncle Sam.

He was initially assigned to the 251st Infantry, drilled in Kentucky at Camp Taylor. Sent to France in June of 1918, he was immediately transferred to the 26th Infantry. The end came soon enough. On the 18th of July, at the Battle of Chateau Thierry, he was MIA and presumed dead.

This is Oviel not all that long before his death.


His body was never recovered. There is a tablet for him at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France.

And this is a marker for him back at Jackson County.


Oviel's younger brother, Cleadies, also served in the Great War, but made it home alive. Oviel's mother, Sarah Utterback Greenlee, died even before he did, two months after he registered for the draft in 1917. Another brother, Harold, died at the age of 16 in 1919 (the death certificate gives the cause as nephritis). The blows came frequently, it seems, to the Greenlee family of Brownstown, Jackson County, Indiana.

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