Black Civil War patriots of Cecil County, Maryland

Kolchin, PeterThe purpose of this thesis is to document the lives, before, during and after the Civil War, of African American Veterans of that war, members of the United States Colored Troop (USCT) regiments all, who were in some way related to Cecil County, Maryland. Either they were born there, lived there, were employed there, died there, and/or were buried there. While some of the subject veterans began their lives in slavery, most were born free. During the war they enlisted in the Union Army and fought at The Crater, Deep Bottom, The Gap, Petersburg, Richmond, and the last scene of the Civil War, the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House, all in Virginia. They marched through Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Florida, and Texas. They fought, they were wounded, and they lost limbs. At least four were killed in action, several more died of diseases that ravaged their military encampments, and a few have their final resting places in the cemeteries of the various black churches that dot the landscape of Cecil County, Maryland. After the war they blended into society raising families, educating their children, buying and selling land, mortgaging that land, and becoming laborers, farmers, sextons, brickmakers, carters, and one restauranteur. The information here offered came from the records of the Historical Society of Cecil County, the Cecil County Court House, the National and Maryland State Archives, the Delaware Historical Society, libraries from Wilmington, Delaware to Corkscrew, Florida, Elkton town and Cecil County municipal files, the Cecil County School District, churches, and web sites, as well as a variety of secondary sources, all giving voice to these now silent African-American Veterans of the American Civil War related to Cecil County, Maryland.University of Delaware, Department of HistoryM.A