Anthony Probstfield’s grave, 4th of July, 2013.Clay County Histories 

Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC

I’m often asked how many local soldiers served in this war or that. I believe it’s impossible to come up with a definitive list because records always overlook people. Furthermore, I find it hard to define what it means to “be from” somewhere. People move around a lot. How long does one have to live here to be “from” here? My friend Mel Johnson enlisted in World War II from Fergus Falls, but he lived in Moorhead for 70 years after the war. Was he a veteran from Clay County or Otter Tail County? Do we count Moorhead’s college students?
When the Civil War started in April of 1861, the only people “from” Clay County in the sense of being born here would be Ojibwe, Dakota, or Métis (and there was no Clay County, Minnesota, in 1861). This was a bustling place, but very few people around here would have considered this their war. The first pioneers from the USA arrived in this section of the Red River only two years before in 1859, and they numbered only a dozen or two at most when the war began. Many young Civil War veterans made their homes in Clay County after the war, but how many Americans enlisted in the US military from the Red River to fight the Confederacy? I count three: Adam Stein, Justice Probstfield, and Anthony Probstfield. Interestingly, all three of them were from Germany.
Were these three men “from” here? Adam Stein has a good claim to be. After the war, he returned to his land at the confluence of the Red and Buffalo Rivers and spent the rest of his life here. Brothers Anthony and Justice Probstfield, however, only moved to America in the summer of 1861 to join their brother Randolph Probstfield on the Minnesota frontier. They never returned because both brothers died of disease during the war and are buried in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Saint Louis. How many months did they actually live here? It doesn’t matter. This was their only home in America. We will claim them as our own.
All three of these soldiers fought in Ulysses Grant’s army in what many believe to be the most brilliant military campaign in American history: the fall of Vicksburg, the Confederacy’s greatest fortress. Grant’s men crossed the Mississippi River and, working behind enemy lines, they won five battles in 17 days and trapped a Confederate army in Vicksburg. On the 4th of July, 1863, as Robert E. Lee’s army limped home from Gettysburg, the Confederate garrison of Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered. Because of their hard fighting, Adam and Justice’s regiment, the 4th Minnesota Infantry, was given the honor of being the first to enter the city.
On the 4th of July, 2013, Larry Henning, a guy from here who moved to St. Louis long ago, laid wreaths on the graves of Justice and Anthony Probstfield in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the surrender of Vicksburg. Every 4th of July, I give some thought and raise a glass to these three soldiers from Clay County.