William Hervy Lamme Wallace could have begun the practice of law with a Springfield lawyer, Abraham Lincoln. Instead, while traveling to Springfield, he met Ottawan T. Lyle Dickey, and established a successful law practice here.

Dickey and Wallace were to enjoy a long and close relationship, first as law partners, then as soldiers in the Mexican War, then as father- and son-in-law after Wallace married Dickey’s daughter, Ann. On politics they did not see eye-to-eye, but when the Civil War came, they were again fighting on the same, the Union, side.

Even as Wallace was lying wounded on the Shiloh battlefield, his wife was struggling to reach her husband in Tennessee. She was to spend the final moments of Wallace’s life at his bedside.
Wallace, his wife Ann, and their daughter Isabelle are shown in the mural. The faces of several of the soldiers who surround the painted general are Ottawa soldiers.

Wallace now lies in a family cemetery on Ottawa’s north bluff. Honored by military historians for withstanding a Confederate onslaught at the Battle of Shiloh, he was nearly forgotten in his adopted home until the mural brought him and his heroism to life again.