George Kryder enlisted as a volunteer in the 3rd O.V.C. when it was formed under
 the leadership of Colonel Zahm in Monroeville, Huron County, Ohio, on November
 20, 1861.  He was one of the 400 in January of 1864 "still fit for service" out
 of the original 1151 who enlisted in November of 1861.


On the 25th of April 1834, Michael and Elizabeth Leininger Kryder welcomed the
 birth of their fourth child, a boy, whom they named George.  His birthplace was 
a cabin in Franklin Township, Summit County, Ohio.  Michael's father, John, had 
migrated to Summit County from the Cumberland Valley (Union County, Reading),
 Pennsylvania.

George's mother died when he was fifteen years old, in 1849.  His father married
 for a second time, his bride being a youthful eighteen year old girl named 
Sarah B. Hawkings.  For some reason, perhaps because of the difficulty of such a 
young bride to deal with step-children her own age and older, Michael Kryder
 decided to migrate "westward" with his new wife to Henry County, leaving the 
four children of his first wife behind.  They settled in the "Hanover 
Settlement," a few miles west of Napoleon in Freedom Township, Henry County,
 Ohio, in 1853.
Young George Kryder, then nineteen years old, moved from Summit to Huron County,
 Ohio, to live near his sister Salome Kryder Coxley.  At Chicago Junction,
 present-day Willard, George Kryder married Elizabeth Sweetland.  Family legend 
suggests that George chivalrously married Elizabeth who was with child and later 
adopted the baby girl Lilie, as his own.  Another daughter, Mary, was born to 
the young farm couple in 1860.

The call to arms of the American Civil War for the "preservation of the union,"
 struck a responsive chord with George Kryder, who, along with his daring and 
bold brother-in-law, Henry Sweetland, joined the Third Ohio Volunteer Cavalry 
organized by Colonel Zahm in nearby Monroeville, Huron County, Ohio.  By 
September of 1861, George and Henry experienced their first lessons of war at 
the hands of rebel Generals Morgan and Beauregard in the Kentucky and Tennessee 
theater of the War of the Rebellion.  Both were attached to the Western Army.

The letters that George Kryder wrote to his wife during his four year enlistment 
and re-enlistment in the Union Army (1861-1865) provide first-hand accounts of 
the Civil War through the eyes of a soldier.  The cavalry exposed George to most 
of the geography of the western and southern areas of the South.  He endured 
many hardships and rigors of war, even a minor wound inflicted on him in January 
of 1863 near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in a fight with Morgan's shotgun-armed
 cavalry.
After the war, George brought his family to Damascus Township, Henry County,
 Ohio (1869) and settled on land still in the family's possession to this day.
  George oversaw the planting of a Centennial oak on July 4, 1876.  In his later 
years, he spent winters in Florida and Alabama, which no doubt were areas he 
reconnoitered, as mentioned in his letters during the final campaigns against 
the Confederacy in the deep south.  Eventually, he settled on a farm in Foley, 
Alabama, in the early 1920s until near the end of his life.  George Kryder died 
at a Virginia Veterans Hospital on November 13, 1925, at the age of ninety-one 
years.