Ephraim Ralph Eckley (December 9, 1811 – March 27, 1908) was an American Civil War veteran and three-term U.S. Representative from Ohio, serving from 1863 to 1869.
He served as member of the State senate 1843-1846, 1849, and 1850 but was an unsuccessful candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Ohio in 1851. He also served in the State house of representatives 1853-1855 but was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1853 to the United States Senate.
Eckley was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, and Fortieth Congresses (March 4, 1863 – March 3, 1869) but was not a candidate for renomination in 1868.
He resumed the practice of law in Carrollton, Ohio. He died March 27, 1908, in Carrollton, Ohio, and was interred in Grand View Cemetery.
He married Martha L. Brown and had five children, including Harvey J. His son Harvey was an Ohio state senator and judge.[4][5]
^The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress states that Eckley was "brevetted brigadier general." No source supports this. The definitive source, United States War Department, The Military Secretary's Office, Memorandum Relative to the General Officers in the Armies of the United States During the Civil War, 1861–1865 (Compiled from Official Records.) 1906 does not list Eckley as a brevet or actual rank general. None of the reliable modern historians who have books compiling lists of and brief bios of Union generals, Hunt and Brown, Hunt, Roger D. and Jack R. Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue. Gaithersburg, MD: Olde Soldier Books, Inc., 1990. ISBN978-1-56013-002-4, Warner, Eicher and Eicher and Sifakis list him as a brevet general.
