From collection Member List
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Lawyer. Noblesville, IN. Initiated September 23, 1859.
D.B. Floyd's History of the Seventy-Fifth Regiment of Indiana Infantry Volunteers (1893) gives the following information: Initially Captain, 12th Indiana. Then among "the most active and prominent men, who raised the Seventy-fifth Indian Regiment" and captain of Co. D. Upon muster became lieutenant-colonel, August 20, 1862. Wounded at Chickamauga and Peachtree Creek; mustered out June 8, 1865.
F.M. Trissal's Public Men of Indiana (1922) fills in the balance. After the war, he "then engaged with his brother, James, in the law practice and was soon elected prosecuting attorney of the circuit and was also chosen as State Senator. . . . Colonel O'Brien was fast gaining popular prominence in the State when his health gave way and in 1874 he went to California in search of health but died at Santa Barbara. His widow, a daughter of the venerable and highly respected John Pontious, a woman of excellent education, returned to Noblesville with her two sons and was for more than a half century a teacher in its public schools." (Page 212.)
