“A hero of Dresden, Leipsic and Waterloo, has answered his last roll call at the advanced age of 92 years. Frederick Hansgen, died at the residence of Mrs. Frank Welte, on Second street, Portsmouth, Ohio, last Sunday morning, April 14th, between the hours of four and five o’clock, retaining his consciousness to the last.”
“Mr. Hansgen was born in Weidenbach, on the Rhine, 7 miles from Coblenz in Prussia, in 1786. He was one of the soldiers under Napoleon, and participated first in the battle of Dresden, next at the great three days’ carnage of Leipsic, in 1813, where he was shot through the hand. For bravery at Leipsic he was commissioned on the 6th of April, 1814, a Lieutenant of Lanwehrs, which commission the writer was permitted to examine.”
“He was also engaged in the memorable battle of Waterloo, where the sun of the little corporal of Corsica went down to rise no more.”
“Lieutenant Hansgen emigrated to this country in 1834, with eight motherless children, four sons and four daughters, to-wit: Robert, dead, Nicholas and John living in this county, and Peter, who was drowned at New Orleans; Miss Kate Scherer, living near Ashland; Katrina Scherer, dead; Mrs. Johanna Christina Somer, living on the West side, and Mrs. Mary Kimmley, of Ironton.”
“The deceased took his bed about two years and ten months ago, but through all his afflictions he preserved that patience and submission to his sufferings as became the devout Catholic which he had been all his life. He had been living since 1868 with Frank Welte, lately deceased. His remains were followed by a long line of his many German friends to the German Catholic Church, where services were conducted by Reverend Father Noonan, and from thence to the Catholic burying ground.”
“Had death come to the follower of the first Napoleon in France, he would have been buried with military honors, but as it is he dies in a foreign land over a half century after the death of his ambitious commander, and after life’s long and fitful fever he sleeps well.”1Death of a lieutenant of landwehrs under napoleon. (1878, April 20). Portsmouth Times, p. 6.2
