Name: Gold T. Curtis Company: K
Enlisted January 7, 1862; died July 24, 1862, at St. Louis, Missouri
Birth
Date: August 16,
1821
Place:
Morrisville, New York
Mustered In
Date: January 7,
1862
Rank: Private
Age: about 38
Residence prior to
military service: New York; Stillwater, Washington County,
Minnesota
Vocation prior to
military service: Lawyer, collection agent (1852-1862)
Death
Date: July 24, 1862
Place: St. Louis,
Missouri
Burial:
Stillwater, Washington County, Minnesota
Gold T. Curtis Biography and Civil
War Narrative
Gold Tompkins Curtis was born
August 16, 1821, in Morrisville, New York. His parents were John G. and
Ruth (Bartlett) Curtis. In 1839 he graduated from Hamilton College in
Clinton, New York.
While still in New York state, Gold T. Curtis began practicing law. He
married Mary Abigail Anderson of Belleville, New York in 1849. They had
a daughter, Jennie, born about 1851-52.
In 1853, Gold and Mary Curtis moved to Stillwater, Washington County,
Minnesota, where Gold continued practicing law and also invested in
real estate. He held offices of district attorney and probate judge,
and was also a member of the constitutional convention of 1857. That
same year Gold and Mary had a son, Gold T. Curtis, Jr., who would later
become a banker in Great Falls, Montana.
At the time of the 1860 U.S. Census, 35-year-old attorney Gold T.
Curtis lived in Stillwater, Minnesota, with his 30-year-old wife, Mary
A. Curtis, his 8-year-old daughter, Jennie O. Curtis, and his
3-year-old son, Gold.
James Taylor Dunn, in his book The
St. Croix: Midwest Border River, includes a chapter focusing on
a few significant people from along the banks of the St. Croix River in
a chapter dubbed "River Rats and Village Folk." One section of that
chapter, namely, "They Buried Him with a Great Parade" focuses on Gold
T. Curtis. Dunn describes the high reputation that Curtis gained for
himself as a lawyer:
His
forensic abilities were considered exceptional both in and out of the
courtroom. The Hudson North Star
in May, 1855, reported that his handling of a Wisconsin murder trial
showed that Curtis possessed a "mind ingenious." It was generally
conceded, too, that he was without a rival in the conduct of a lawsuit
and as a pleader in open court -- never losing his self-possession or
forgetting the one objective that he would win the case. [page
228]
Dunn also describes Curtis's dedication to the "Union cause":
"Slavery
must fall," the Stillwater lawyer told his minister, the Reverend R. C.
Bull. "I want a hand in it. I want it said when I am gone that I aided
and participated in this great struggle." Late in December, 1861,
Curtis abandoned his legal practice and at great personal expense
opened a recruiting office. He was eminently successful in assembling a
full company of area men for the Fifth Regiment of Minnesota Infantry.
One of the men that Curtis recruited
was his own partner, John P. Houston. Gold T. Curtis enlisted as a
private in Company K of the 5th Minnesota on January 7, 1862. He was
officially appointed Captain of the company on April 30, 1862. John
Houston was named First Lieutenant. About May 13, 1862, Captain Curtis
and his company left Fort Snelling and headed south along with
Companies A, E, F, G, H, and I. By the time they left Minnesota, a
number of the volunteers had already deserted at Fort Snelling:
Alexander Kennedy (March 24), Thomas Clark (before April 30), Peter Le
Blanc (April 30), Michael Green (May 8), William Carrey (May 10), James
Black, Sr. (May 12), and Gabriel Olson (prior to May 13). An
18-year-old musician, William Mathews, was retained in Minnesota by
civil authorities on May 13. The Company was at St. Louis, Missouri on
May 18-19, and four more enlisted men deserted: John Leary, Cornelius
McGuire, Cornelius O'Grady, Patrick O'Leary.
The 5th Minnesota Regiment reported to General John Pope near Corinth,
Mississippi, on May 24, where they were attached to the Second Brigade
(Loomis), Second Division (Stanley), Army of Mississippi (Pope). Just
four days later they were engaged in the Battle of Farmington. The
Siege of Corinth -- a vital rail center -- had begun on April 29 under
the command of Major General Henry W. Halleck. Taking Corinth was
Halleck's follow-up objective to the Union victory at Shiloh on April
6-7. Halleck used a slow, deliberate "offensive entrenchment" approach
to Corinth, fortifying after each advance. A battle at Farmington on
May 28 was just one of several encounters in the tedious process.
Company K suffered at least two significant casualties at Farmington:
the death of William Blackburn and the wounding of Henry Base.
Brigadier General David S. Stanley commanding the Second Division
submitted the following report of the activities of May 28th:
On
the 28th my division moved forward 1 1/4 miles and halted near the
White House on Bridge Creek, presenting a diagonal double line to
Corinth, the right flank nearest the enemy's main work and the front
facing a large earthwork battery erected by the enemy south of the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad. This battery was silent for several
hours until about noon.
I directed Dees' and Maurice's batteries to open upon the position, and
was soon answered by four guns from the rebel battery. Notwithstanding
their fire, which mostly passed over the heads of our men, the work of
intrenching was carried on until about 3 o'clock p.m., when the enemy,
who had previously cut roads through the swamp and across Bridge Creek,
approached in three column and attacked our right, their battery at the
time plying us with round shot and shell. Of how this was met and
repulsed a full report has been made to the general commanding the
army. Suffice to say that the result was satisfactory to the Second
Division. We had to deplore the loss of some gallant men, but in turn
we buried over 50 of the enemy in a space of 3 acres, and the lesson
they received permitted our pickets to remain in peace during the
forty-eight hours we remained in that place. My division was the
advanced salient point of the line investing Corinth, and the energy
and industry of our troops made our position so strong by the morning
of the 29th that it would have been a bold enemy that would have
disturbed us. [Official Records, Chapter XXII: Series 1, vol 10,
Part 1
(Shiloh), pp. 722-723]
During the night of May 29, the Confederate Army snuck out of Corinth,
and Union patrols entered on May 30 finding it abandoned by the
Confederates. The 5th Minnesota marched south in pursuit of the
withdrawing Confederates to Tuscumbia Creek on May 30, and on June 2
they continued on to Booneville. They returned toward Corinth on
Wednesday and Thursday, June 11 and 12, settling in at Camp Clear
Creek. The march in the hot Mississippi sun had been a challenge for
the Minnesota soldiers who were accustomed to a cooler climate. Camp
Clear Creek became the Regiment's home until August. Unfortunately the
toll taken by the heat and the camp conditions was greater on the
Regiment than the battle on May 28 or many of the subsequent battles.
Lucius F. Hubbard described the conditions:
The regiment did
not enjoy life much at Camp Clear Creek. It was an unhealthy locality.
Disease lurked in the earth and in the air, and its seeds became
implanted in the constitutions of many of the men. [Minnesota in
the
Civil and Indian Wars, Volume I, page 261]
On July 10, 1862, Governor
Alexander Ramsey wrote a letter to Lieutenant Governor Ignatious
Donnelly in St. Paul, Minnesota, while
visiting the 4th and 5th Minnesota regiments in Mississippi.
He reported that Captain Curtis was ill and had left for home the
previous day. Having received furlough from General Rosecrans, Curtis
traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, where he was met by his wife. Gold T.
Curtis died of dysentery in St. Louis on July 24, 1862. His remains
were brought back to Stillwater, Minnesota, and interred with military
honors on August 2, 1862.
The Minnesota Historical Society has in its collections the "Gold T.
Curtis and family papers, 1842-1901." Included in the papers are
correspondence and related legal and financial papers (1842-1901),
Washington County (Minn.) township plats (undated), diaries
(1854-1859), daybook and ledgers (1843-1862), cash books (1853-1861)
and other materials (1853-1862) created by Gold and Mary Curtis.
Gold
T. Curtis