In 1863, Ohio Governor David Tod, believing President Abraham Lincoln needed a cavalry bodyguard, requested one volunteer from each county in Ohio for special duty. Guernsey County supplied Ephraim Adamson, a twenty-four-year-old farmer who, like the other recruits, did not know his assignment until he was mustered into service and taken to Washington, D. C. Officially the 7th Independent Company, Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, the unit was known as the Union Light Guard. Although it had more than one hundred men, not all remained with Lincoln, as a large contingent guarded important Washington public buildings including the War and Treasury Departments. Lincoln spent summers at the Soldier’s Home, and guards escorted him to and from downtown Washington, while Adamson mainly served at General Daniel Rucker’s headquarters. In April 1865, Adamson was at the Executive Mansion and heard Lincoln give his final speech on April 11; John Wilkes Booth heard the same speech and, because of it, decided to assassinate the President. Lincoln had no guard on the night of April 14 because he typically refused a detail while attending the theater. Adamson mustered out in September 1865, returned to Ohio, sold goods from a wagon, married Josephine Scott, and moved to Moweaqua, where he became a farmer and accumulated substantial property in Illinois and Nebraska. He and his wife had eight children, he attended reunions with many from his unit in the late nineteenth century, and as one of the last survivors he died in Moweaqua in 1928. Lincoln and his family frequently interacted with the guard; on one occasion Tad Lincoln got the captain’s whistle that signaled sentinels to change position every half hour and blew it repeatedly, surprising and confusing the guards. Adamson and others also complained about not fighting on the front line, and Lincoln replied that although he preferred not to have a guard, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton insisted on it, then illustrated the point with a farmer’s story about not understanding why the Lord put the curl in a pig’s tail.