William J. Knight (1837-1916), born in Wayne County, Ohio, and raised near Farmer, Ohio, enlisted in Company E, 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry after the outbreak of the Civil War. On April 12, 1862, at age twenty-five, he took part as an engineer in Andrews Raid, led by James J. Andrews. The raiders stole the locomotive General at Big Shanty, Georgia, intending to cut telegraph lines and destroy railroad bridges and tracks as they moved north between Atlanta and Chattanooga, but they were captured above Ringgold, Georgia. Eight raiders were executed in June 1862. Knight and seven others escaped from an Atlanta jail on October 16, 1862, and reached Federal lines, and six raiders were exchanged in 1863. Knight and eighteen other raiders received the Medal of Honor for their roles. He was discharged from the army on September 27, 1864, when his term of service expired, and by 1886 had settled in Stryker, where he gave lectures about the raid.