On that hot Sunday afternoon when Carl Sandburg and six boys from his neighborhood went skinny dipping in the brickyard pond, there was more than one new experience awaiting them.

 

They rode in the police paddy wagon, they spent several hours in the stinking jail and were told to appear before the Justice of the Peace on Monday morning.

 

On Monday morning they appeared before Justice of the Peace B.F. Holcomb and pleaded guilty to the offense of swimming naked inside the city limits on a Sunday. In a grandfatherly way, Justice Holcomb spoke to each of the boys and told them they should understand what they had done was against the law. He made each boy promise never to do it again.

 

Afterward, they walked home as free as the breeze and were ready for their next adventure.

 

Benjamin Franklin Holcomb was born July 24, 1821, in Westport, New York. He was one of the seventeen children born to Dr. Diodorous and Sylvia Loveland Holcomb. Dr. Holcomb had served in the War of 1812 and followed his profession until his death in 1860.

 

At the age of sixteen Benjamin started clerking in a store near his home. Then he learned the tailoring trade. He married Elizabeth A. Towner, a native of St. Johns, Canada, on May 14, 1844. Eight children were born to them. In 1855 the  family came to Galesburg. He worked as a cutter in a tailoring business. In 1859 he was elected city treasurer. On December 24, 1861, he resigned the office and enlisted in Company K of the 45^th Illinois Infantry Regiment. He was made captain of his company. The regiment was called the Washburn Lead Mine Regiment in honor of Elihu B. Washburn, who represented the northwestern part of the state in Congress. Since a number of the men in the unit were from Galena, the name also described the mining of lead in that place.

 

The regiment went into battle at Fort Donelson on February 11, 1862. The weather had been warm and sunny several day before. Some of the soldiers had thrown away their heavy coats and blankets. On the night of the twelfth there was snow and the temperature dropped down to ten or twelve degrees. Equipment froze to the ground as well as supplies and the wounded soldiers. Fires could not be lighted for warmth for fear that enemy snipers would shoot down the soldiers around them.

 

Two months later the regiment fought at Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war. Holcomb was wounded in the right side, which removed him from the battlefield for three months. The wound never completely healed.

 

In July 1862 Holcomb became an aid-de-camp on General John Logan's staff and later on General M.D. Leggett's staff.

 

After his war service, Holcomb returned to Galesburg and served as constable of the city. In 1882 he secured a contract from the city of Galesburg to provide street lights on the outskirts of the city. In the spring of 1889, he became Justice of the Peace. He was a member of the James Shields Post of the Grand Army of the Republic. He died June 22, 1899.

 

In the years afterward, Carl Sandburg remembered Justice Holcomb had dispensed “the quality of justice” to the members of the Dirty Dozen who had sought to cool off with a swim on a hot Sunday afternoon inside the city limits.