prisoner exchange in January 1865. Lilly was promoted to colonel on June 4, 1865, and was stationed at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the spring of 1865 when the war ended. In recognition of his service, he was brevetted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and mustered out of service with the 9th Indiana Cavalry on August 25, 1865. In later life Lilly obtained a large atlas and marked the path of his movements in the war and the location of battles and skirmishes. He often used the atlas when telling war stories. His colonel's title stayed with him for the rest of his life, and his friends and family used it as a nickname for him. Lilly served as chairman of the Grand Army of the Republic, a brotherhood of Union Civil War veterans, in 1893. During his term he helped organize an event that brought tens of thousands of Union war veterans, including Lilly's battery, together in Indianapolis for a reunion and a large parade. Early business ventures After the war, Lilly remained in the South to begin a new business venture. Lilly and his business partner leased Bowling Green, a cotton plantation in Mississippi. Lilly traveled to Greencastle, Indiana, and returned with his wife, Emily, his sister, Anna Wesley Lilly, and son, Josiah. Shortly after the move the entire family was stricken with a mosquito-borne disease, probably malaria, that was common in the region at that time. Although the others recovered, Emily died on August 20, 1866, eight months pregnant with a second son, who was stillborn. The death devastated Lilly; he wrote to his family, "I can hardly tell you how it glares at me ...it's a bitter, bitter truth ... Emily is indeed dead." Lilly abandoned the plantation and returned to Indiana. The plantation fell into disrepair and a drought caused its cotton crop to fail. Lilly's business partner, unable to maintain the plantation because of the drought, disappeared with the venture's remaining cash. Lilly was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1868. Lilly worked to resolve the situation on the plantation and find other employment while his young son, Josiah, lived with Colonel Lilly's parents in Greencastle. In 1867, Lilly found work at the Harrison Daily and Company, a wholesale drug firm. In 1869, he began working for Patterson, Moore and Talbott, another medicinal wholesale company, before he moved to Illinois to establish a new business.