Leo Edward Craigen

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Leo Edward Craigen. Born 1845, died 1910, and in between, friend, he packed in more living than most men manage on two good legs.

Let's start at Shiloh. That name alone ought to give you pause. Craigen was riding with the Confederate Army of the Mississippi when the battle found him, and it found him hard.

He was wounded at Shiloh, and the surgery that followed took his leg. Now a lesser man might have called that the end of the story. Craigen called it the middle.

He came back. Served with the Cavalry straight through to the end of the war. One leg.

Still in the saddle. You can't make that up, and I don't have to. Fast forward to 1879.

The war is long over, and Leo Craigen has reinvented himself as a schoolteacher out at Taylor's Bayou School near Hamshire. One year into that chapter, he married Ellen Aurelia Schneider. She had been one of his students.

You can decide what you think about that, but the marker doesn't editorialize and neither will I. Then comes 1895, and Craigen takes on the job that would define the last stretch of his life. Rural mail carrier for the Fannett area.

He rode that route, rain or shine, until his death in 1910. A man who survived Shiloh, lost a leg, finished a war on horseback, taught school, and then spent fifteen years making sure his neighbors got their letters. Leo Edward Craigen.

Some stories don't need embellishing. They just need tellin'.

What the marker says

(1845-1910) During the Civil War, Leon Edward Craigen joined the Confederate Army of the Mississippi and was wounded at Shiloh. Following surgery to remove his leg, he served with the Cavalry until the end of the war. In 1879 he became a teacher at Taylor's Bayou School near Hamshire. One year later he married Ellen Aurelia Schneider, one of his students. From 1895 until his death in 1910, Craigen served as rural mail carrier for the Fannett area.