PVT Josiah M. Topping
1848 - 1908
Co. H, 49th Wisconsin Infantry
CW
Josiah Melbourne Topping was born in Darian, Wisconsin, on July 3, 1848, the son of Edward and Elizabeth (Gardiner) Topping.
When sixteen years of age, he enlisted in Company H, 49th Wisconsin Infantry, serving for 9 months of garrison and guard duty at the end of the Civil War.
After the war, he traveled the country with his brother in one of the first minstrel troupes, the Cotton and Wagner Minstrels. He was also a steward on Mississippi River and Lake Michigan boats.
In 1869, Topping married Nancy Chilson of Darien; they had one son before her untimely death. He remarried in Chicago on April 13, 1881, Magdalena Wyckoff, and they had four children, two dying young.
He became a police officer in 1871, and served for seventeen years as a policeman and detective. He was personally acquainted with Chicago’s prominent men of the times and every crook who haunted the city; known for his bravery as well as his kindly ways and beautiful tenor voice.
Upon retiring from the police force, Topping managed a Chicago theatre, sometimes playing parts himself; he also managed a hotel nearby. Later, he owned a livestock farm in Lee County for two years.
The family moved to the Barrington area after the turn of the century, owning a farm there for three years before building a home in town, where he was appointed night policeman and constable of Lake County.
A restless, kind and highly interesting man, Private Josiah Topping died February 18, 1908 at his home in Barrington; he is buried with his wife at Evergreen Cemetery.
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Remember. Honor. Teach.
Courtesy of Signal Hill Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution