The 53rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment was mustered into service at Camp Diamond, north of Jackson, during the first year of the Civil War. Men recruited from the counties of Athens, Gallia, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs, Pike, Ross, Scioto, Washington, Hamilton, and Preble began arriving for training in September 1861 at the former Diamond iron furnace site, about one mile north of Jackson, where a brick store and warehouse served as headquarters and quartermaster storage and smaller buildings served as company headquarters. The regiment’s ten companies, designated A-K, had a hundred or more men each and a total strength of 1,100 soldiers. At camp, officers, some of them Methodist ministers, prohibited drinking and card-playing, and prayer meetings or religious services were held nightly. On February 16, 1862, the army ordered the regiment to Paducah, Kentucky, where it was assigned to General William Tecumseh Sherman’s command. From April 1862 to February 1865, the 53rd fought in 69 engagements, including the Battle of Shiloh, its first, and the Atlanta Campaign. After hostilities ended, it marched in the Grand Review in Washington D.C on May 24, 1865, and was mustered out of service in Little Rock, Arkansas, on August 11. The unit suffered 80 battlefield casualties, and 196 men died of disease or accidents. After the regiment left in February 1862, Camp Diamond was not used again as a training facility, though surviving members returned to the old campgrounds for regimental reunions in 1885 and 1887.