Beeks line: William Beeks, Civil War veteran, and ancestor

I've been studying family history for thirteen years, and I've made thousands of interesting discoveries (and more than a few mistakes).  I thought I pretty much knew everything back through the past five or six generations.  That was another mistake.  I thought that the William Beeks who was in the Civil War, from Lagro, Wabash County, Indiana must have been another William Beeks, because his parents were listed on an 1890 "enrollment" form as Martin Beeks and Sarah Beeks. 
I was wrong.  The form was wrong. 

So, here's a brief review of William Beeks.  William was born in 1832 or 1833 in either Greene or Clinton County Ohio.  His parents were John and Polly (possibly Mary) Carter Beeks.  They had married in 1830 in Greene County, Ohio.  I'm not at all sure that I have all of their children, but William was one of them.  The Beeks family had moved to Lagro, Wabash County, Indiana by 1850, where John farmed and William undoubtedly helped him.

By 1860, William was ready for marriage.  He married Fanny Dils and had two children with her, Elias and Isaac.  She died shortly after the death of their second child, and he then married Mary Wise on January 14, 1863.  Or did he...He certainly married her, but was she Mary Wise?  That is a subject for another blog post, when I know more.  Their first two children were named Charity, for Mary's mother, and Jackson, for her father...Or were they her parents?  Stay tuned. 

All of this was happening during the background of the Civil War.  Wabash County sent many, many men to fight for the Union.  Elias and Isaac may have been raised by their grandparents, because they were with John and Polly in the 1870 census, but William had two young ones at home when he (apparently) enlisted in the Army on January 28, 1865.  I don't yet have access to all of his military records, so it's possible he was drafted, but the form I am working from says "volunteers".  He was assigned to company F of the 153rd Indiana Infantry. 

This unit was officially mustered in at Indianapolis on March 1, 1865, although company F, composed of men from Wabash and Grant counties, may have formed and drilled between the January and March dates, closer to home.  They had very little time for training after they mustered in, because they were on their way to Nashville, Tennessee by March 5.  I don't know whether they ever got to Nashville because the regiment was stopped at Louisville and three companies were ordered into guerilla warfare in and around Russellville, Kentucky.  Company F was not one of them.  They went to Taylor Barracks,  where they stayed for the rest of the war.

Taylor Barracks is interesting because it was a camp for black Union soldiers.  I would sure be interested in knowing what a regiment of troops from Indiana was doing there.  Were they some kind of guards for the supposedly freed soldiers?  Were they sent there for training which, due to the war ending, never happened?  Did they perform hospital duty for the sick soldiers?  I don't yet know the answer to these questions.

I do know that the unit was disbanded on September 4, 1865, and I think that William came home a sick man.  The 1890 enrollment form says he suffered from chronic diarrhea (dysentery), which was both debilitating and common with soldiers of that era.  I've found that he applied for an invalid pension shortly before his death.  It looks like this was granted, because there are also records for a widow's pension.  William died September 25, 1888 and his widow, Mary, died December 17, 1928.  From what I know now, it looks like neither left Lagro township, except for the war experience. 

My next step is to save up the money to order the pension records.  I want to know, and I want the family to know, more about his Civil War service, and to understand how it affected him for the rest of his life.  I also want to know if the records give us any clues about Mary, his wife.  Was she a Wise, or was she, as I've been told, adopted at a very young age?  Might her birth name have been Rauch?   Did she even know she was adopted?  These may end up to be two separate lines of investigation, but I'm intrigued by both.  I hope to find some answers. 

The line of descent is:

William Beeks-Mary Wise or Rauch
John Beeks-Elizabeth Wise
Wilbur Beeks-Cleo Aldridge
Mary Margaret Beeks-Cleveland Harshbarger
Their descendants