JEFFERSON TWP — Four Medal of Honor recipients with connections to Butler County were featured in the May 24 edition of the Butler Eagle. However, there is another Medal of Honor tie to the county.

Wilson McGonagle, a veteran of the Civil War, received the medal in 1894 and was later buried in the cemetery at the Summit Presbyterian Church in Jefferson Township.

McGonagle, who was born in Ohio and lived most of his life there, was buried here after his death in 1912 and shares a headstone with his wife, Mary.

The cemetery plot is owned by her family, the Welsh family, and McGonagle is the most recent burial there, said Terry Dean, church secretary.

Though not indicated on the original headstone, a historic group from Ohio installed an additional stone several years ago, with permission, indicating his military honors, Dean said.

McGonagle was a private in Company B of the 30th Ohio Infantry of the Army.

Bill May, a Butler historian who researches the Civil War, said McGonagle was one of 97 Union soldiers to be awarded the Medal of Honor for their role in the battle at Vicksburg, Miss.

On May 22, 1863, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant launched an assault that was met with heavy Confederate fire.

McGonagle was one of 80 soldiers awarded the medal for their roles in a mission from which they were not expected to survive, May said.

His official citation said that he was awarded for “gallantry in the charge of the ‘volunteer storming party.’”

The volunteer storming party was a group of 150 men who went into the battlefield before the main assault and carried logs to build a bridge over the ditch protecting the enemy’s fort.

Since the party was expected to face heavy fire and not to have many survivors, the commanding officers sought volunteers from each regiment instead of ordering soldiers for the mission.

The assault failed, but the Union then staged a 47-day siege of the city, which finally surrendered on July 4, 1863.

McGonagle lived in Ohio after the war. He was at a soldier’s home in Dayton, Ohio, when he died.