Isaac Larimer Work was the second son of Abel Everett Work (1815-1898) and Cynthia Hanley Larimer (1814-1882). Isaac was born on December 16, 1838 near Bremen, Fairfield county, Ohio. When he was young, his parents moved the family to a farm near Middlebury, Elkhart county, Indiana.

In his early 20s, he and his brother John Wright Work (1841-1863) enrolled in the college prep course at famously anti-slavery Hillsdale College in southern Michigan. During the 1861 fall term, they studied Latin, Greek, penmanship, English composition, and natural philosophy.

In spring, 1862, after the academic year ended, the idealistic Work brothers, along with more than 300 other classmates, returned home and enlisted to fight for the Union. Isaac and John joined Company I of the 74th Indiana Infantry when it was organized in August of 1862.

Sadly, Isaac died in an army hospital in Gallatin, Tennessee, on December 29, 1862, having just turned 24 years old. The official cause of death was “diarrhea,” an ailment that killed numerous soldiers. Isaac’s brother John also died in Gallatin, Tennessee, from a case of “chronic diarrhea,” at age 22, on January 15, 1863. (Some sources show slightly different death dates, but both of the brothers died within weeks of each other.)

When their father Abel Everett Work died in 1898, his obituary said that sons Isaac Larimer Work and John Wright Work had “lost their lives in the war of rebellion.” - Written and contributed by Marian Burk Wood in December, 2020

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