1st OVI Receives Equipment

On October 31, 1861, the 1^st OVI moved from Camp Corwin, near Dayton, Ohio to Cincinnati.  On November 4, arms and equipment were issued.  Albert Kern, in his 1918 history of the 1^st OVI, writes that the men were given “reformed old service muskets, 69 caliber guns, changed from the flint system by the Greenwood Company of Cincinnati, to the percussion system and hurriedly rifled to take the then new type of Minie bullets.  These old guns rendered reasonably good service, but will always be remembered by the survivors of the First Ohio, as giving a prodigious “kick” when the heavy charge was fired.”