G. A. R. VETERAN ANSWERS CALL
William H. Howard, 97, Reno Post Member Dies- Career Colorful.
Taps sounded Friday night for William Henry Howard, 97-year-old Civil war veteran, who once cheated death at the hands of a Confederate soldier, and who attributed his longevity to abstinence from liquor and tobacco.                                                                                                           Mr. Howard died in the Deaconess hospital after a five week's illness. His home was at E804 Broad, with a stepdaughter. Mrs. Blanche Henry. Born September 5,1840, in Illinois, Mr. Howard moved at an early age to a farm in Barry county, Mo., with his father and brothers. Here he experienced the first horrors of the Civil war, with most of his neighbors Confederacy sympathizers.                                                                     Saw Farm Pillaged.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      In a Confederate raid, the Howard farm was pillaged, and then the young Wiliam Henry Howard pierced through the lung by the blade of a southern soldier's saber. The wound incapacitated him for a year.                                                                                                                                    On his recovery, He enlisted with the Seventh Illinois cavalry, and later served under General Sherman on his famous march "from Atlanta to  the sea."
Mr. Howard was one of the nine surviving members of J. L. Reno post, G. A. R., of which he was past
commander and chaplain for many years.
Inland Empire Pioneer.
Mr. Howaid was first married in, 1872 when he took Miss Marietta I. Wilson as a bride at Sidney, Iowa.
She succumbed in 1881 and his second marriage took place in 1894
when he married Miss Dessie Dearling of Davenport, Wash.
The aged Civil war veteran was 
regarded as a real Inland Empire
pioneer, having homesteaded a
farm in the Big Bend country, in
1880. Later, for nine years he was 
postmaster at Creston, until moving 
to Spokane in 1916.
Driven Here by Hoppers.
He selected the west as his home
after a grasshopper plague ruined
five out of nine crops he planted on
his farm in North Dakota.
Mr. Howard in 1932 was as
strong for prohibition as he  was for Herbert Hoover.
Survivors include his widow, Mrs.
Dessie Howard, at E804 Broad, with
a stepdaughter, Mrs. Henry; a son,
J. E.Howard, and a daughter, Mrs.
Floyd Ferguson, both of Spokane,
a stepson, City Auditor Harry
L. Dearling, also of Spokane. A granddaughter, Mrs. Ruth Reard
of Epharta, also survives. The body
is at Hazen & Jaeger's funeral
home.