From the Free Will Baptist Cyclopedia
Dunn Francis Wayland, Son of Rev. R Dunn, was born in Ashtabula County, O Jan 29, 1843. Early and always he was very conscientious and decided. Nothing seemed to tempt him to violate his conscience or parental direction. Remarkable in the strictest regard for truth and purity of character from a child, he was soberly reverential, and when fifteen years of the age was baptized. With firm health and unbroken perseverance in study he graduated from the classical college course before he was nineteen years old. Soon after leaving college he enlisted as a private soldier, but was soon transferred to another regiment as sergeant major, then commissioned first lieutenant and commissary. The term for which his regiment enlisted expired in 1864, and as his only brother had died in the army and his father health was not good, he did not deem it his duty to re-enlist.
As a competent member of a successful business firm he spent a year in Chicago, and then spent nearly a year in eastern travel, visiting Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and most of the European countries. Not long after his return from Europe he was elected editor of the Christian Freeman (q. v.). In 1869 a severe cough and other symptoms led his physician to advise the cessation of that mode of life. Remedies and changes of location and climates were but partially successful, and yet, having been elected a professor in Hillsdale College, he did valuable service in that institution during the last four years of his life. Dec. 13, 1873 he peacefully closed a brief but useful life.
In spite of a great heart, deeply emotional nature, and lively imagination, his conscious, firmness of purpose, and intellectual force secured evenness of temper, soundness of judgment and symmetrical piety, rendering him an able writer and good teacher.
Service records compiled by Glenda Todd and used with her permission. This and other information about the history of the First and the men who fought with the unit
can be found in her book, First Alabama Cavalry, USA: Homage to Patriotism.