Birthplaces

Alabama

John Hunt Morgan, born June 1, 1825

John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the eldest of ten children of Calvin and Henrietta Hunt Morgan. He was a maternal grandson of John Wesley Hunt, a founder of Lexington, Kentucky, and one of the first millionaires wet of the Allegheny Mountains. He was 36 years old when the Civil War began. He was the eldest of six brothers, all of whom would fight for the Confederacy. His two sisters married Confederate generals. He and his brother, Tom, were killed during the war.

Lewis Thornton Powell (aka Lewis Paine or Payne), 
born April 22, 1844
Lewis Powell was born in Randolph County, Alabama, on April 22, 1844 to a Baptist minister, schoolmaster, farmer, blacksmith and slaveowner, George Cader Powell, and his wife Patience Caroline Powell.  He was 17 when the Civil War began.  He died  four years later at the end of the war, at the age of 21, hanged for conspiracy in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Rosa Parks, born February 4, 1913
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama to Leona Edwards and James McCauley, a teacher and a carpenter. She was born 48 years after the Civil War ended. The former Confederate states had passed new constitutions and electoral laws that effectively disfranchised black voters and, in Alabama, many poor white voters as well. Under the white-established Jim Crow laws, racial segregation was imposed in public facilities and retail stores in the South, including public transportation. Bus and train companies enforced seating policies with separate sections for blacks and whites. School bus transportation was unavailable in any form for black schoolchildren in the South, and black education was always underfunded.




Connecticut


John Brown, born May 9, 1800

John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut. He was the fourth of eight children of Owen Brown and Ruth Mills Brown. He died more than a year before the Civil War began, at the age of 59.

David Ruggles, born March 10, 1810
David Ruggles was born in Lyme, Connecticut. His parents were David Ruggles, Sr. and Nancy Ruggles, both free blacks. He died 10 years before the Civil War began.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, born June 14, 1811

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut on June 14, 1811. She was the seventh of 13 children born to religious leader Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) and Roxana (Foote) (1775- 1816), a deeply religious woman. Harriet Beecher Stowe was 50 years old when the Civil War began.

Henry Ward Beecher, born June 24, 1813

Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Henry was the eighth of thirteen children of Lyman Beecher, a Presbyterian preacher from Boston, Massachusetts. Henry's mother, Roxana Foote, died when Henry was three years old. He was 48 years old when the Civil War began.

Frederick Law Olmstead, born April 26, 1822
Frederick Law Olmsted was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on April 26, 1822. He was 39 years old when the Civil War began.

John Pierpont Morgan, born April 17, 1837
John Pierpont "J. P." Morgan was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the first child of Junius Spencer Morgan and Juliet Pierpont. He was 24 years old when the Civil War began.

Georgia

Joseph Vann, born February 11, 1798

Joseph Vann was born at Spring Place, Georgia on February 11, 1798. Vann died 17 years before the Civil War began.

Alexander Stephens, born February 11, 1812
Alexander Stephens was born on February 11, 1812. His parents were Andrew Baskins Stephens and Margaret Grier, who were married in 1807. The Stephenses lived on a farm near present-day Crawfordville, Georgia. Stephens was 49 years old when the Civil War began. By the time of the Civil War, Stephens owned 34 slaves and several thousand acres.











Montgomery Meigs, born May 3, 1816

Montgomery Cunningham Meigs was born in Augusta, Georgia on May 3, 1816. He was the son of Dr. Charles Delucena Meigs and Mary Montgomery Meigs. His father was a nationally known obstetrician and professor of obstetrics at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was 45 years old when the Civil War began.

P.B.S. Pinchback, born May 10, 1837
Pinckney Benton Stewart was born May 10, 1837, in Macon, Georgia, the eighth of ten children of Eliza Stewart, a former slave, and Major William Pinchback, a planter and her former master. They lived together as husband and wife, but interracial marriage was forbidden by state laws. P.B.S. Pinchback was 24 years old when the Civil War began.  







Henry Adams, born March 16, 1843
Born a slave in Newton County, Georgia on March 16, 1843, Henry Adams was originally named Henry Houston but his name was changed at the age of seven when he and his family became the property of the teen-aged Nancy Emily Adams. He was 18 years old when the Civil War began.



Henry Flipper, born March 21, 1856

Henry Ossian Flipper was born into slavery in 1856 in Thomasville, Georgia. He was 6 years old when the Civil War began in April 1861.  

Illinois

John Logan, born February 9, 1826
John Alexander Logan was born in 1826 near what is now Murphysboro, Jackson County, Illinois. Logan was the son of Dr. and Mrs. John Logan, a prominent family in the area. Logan was 35 years old when the Civil War began; he was a Democratic Congressional representative. He fought at Bull Run as an unattached volunteer to a Michigan regiment, then resigned his congressional seat and and entered the Union Army as colonel of the 31st Illinois Volunteers, which he organized.

Nella Larsen, born April 13, 1891

Nellallitea Walker was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 13, 1891, the daughter of Marie Hanson, a Danish immigrant, and Peter Walker, a West Indian man of predominantly African descent from Saint Croix. She was born 26 years after the Civil War ended.











Indiana

Lew Wallace, born April 10, 1827

Lewis "Lew" Wallace was born in Brookville, Franklin County, Indiana to David Wallace and Esther French (Test) Wallace. He was 33 years old when the Civil War began. 

William Martin Dickson, 
born September 19, 1827
William Martin Dickson was born in Lexington, Indiana.  He lost his father, a farmer, at the age of 8. He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.

Jefferson C. Davis, born March 2, 1828
Jefferson Columbus Davis was the first of eight children born  in Clark County, Indiana to William Davis and Mary Drummond.  He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.






Kentucky

Albert Sidney Johnston, 
born February 2, 1803
Albert Sidney Johnston was born in the village of Washington, Mason County, Kentucky. He was the youngest son of Doctor John Johnston, a physician and one of the early settlers of that town. His mother was Abigail Harris Johnston.  Johnston was 58 years old when the Civil War began; he was the commander of the U.S. Army Department of the Pacific in California.  He resigned his commission as soon as he heard that the state of Texas had seceded.  

Claiborne Fox Jackson, born April 4, 1806
Claiborne Fox Jackson, one of ten children of Dempsey Carroll and Mary Orea "Molly" (Pickett) Jackson, was born in Fleming County, Kentucky, where his father was a wealthy tobacco farmer and slaveholder. He was 55 years old when the Civil War began.

Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, the second child of  Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln (née Hanks), in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky. Lincoln was 53 years old when the Civil War began; he was assassinated six days after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered.









Ormsby Mitchel, born August 28, 1810

Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel was born near Morganfield in Union County, Kentucky, to John and Elizabeth McAllister Mitchel, who had moved there from Virginia. His father died when Ormsby was three years old. In 1814, his mother took her younger children, Vincent, John, Jane, Ormsby, and Letitia to Lebanon, Ohio, where her oldest daughter, who was married, had settled. He was 50 years old when the Civil War began.

Cassius Marcellus Clay, 
born October 19, 1810
Cassius Clay, nicknamed "Cash", was the youngest son of the nine children of General Green Clay and his wife, Sally Lewis Clay. He was born at Clermont, their home in the Richmond area of Madison County, Kentucky. He was 50 years old when the Civil War began.

Beriah Magoffin, born April 18, 1815
Beriah Magoffin was born on April 18, 1815 in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, the son of Beriah and Jane (McAfee) Magoffin. He was 46 years old when the Civil War began.

John Gregg Fee, 
born September 9, 1816

John Gregg Fee was born in Bracken County, Kentucky on September 9, 1816, the first child of John Fee, Jr. and Sarah Gregg Free. The community was founded with the help of his grandfather, John Fee, Sr., a native of Maryland, who moved to Kentucky in 1791. His mother and her brother, John Gregg, came from an antislavery Quaker family.  As a boy, he was known as Gregg. He was 44 years old when the Civil War began.

Theodore O'Hara, born February 11, 1820

Theodore O'Hara was born to educator Kane O'Hara and his wife in Danville, Kentucky on February 11, 1820. O'Hara was 41 years old when the Civil War began.

Francis Preston Blair, Jr. born February 19, 1821
Francis Preston Blair, Jr. was born in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the the third and youngest son of Francis Preston and Eliza Gist Blair. He was 41 years old when the Civil War began.

Charles W. Field, born April 6, 1828
Charles William Field was born at the family plantation, "Airy Mount," in Woodford County, Kentucky. He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.

Allen Allensworth, born April 7, 1842

Born into slavery in Louisville, Kentucky in 1842, Allen was the youngest of thirteen children of Phyllis Starbird and Levi Allensworth. Allen was 19 years old when the Civil War 

Andrew Jackson Smith, 
born September 3, 1843

Andrew Jackson Smith was born into slavery in Lyon County, Kentucky, the son of Susan, a slave, and Elijah Smith, who owned her.  As a boy, he was called "Andy." When he was ten years old, Elijah assigned him to run a ferry transporting people and supplies across the Cumberland River. Andy continued this work for the next eight years. He was 18 years old when the Civil War began.

Mary "Queen" Mellen Palmer, born March 26, 1850

Mary Lincoln Mellen was born in Prestonburg, Kentucky on March 26, 1850. She was 11 years old when the Civil War began.

Garrett Morgan, born March 4, 1877
Garrett Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky, 12 years after the end of the Civil War to Sydney and Eliza Reed, former slaves.

Louisiana

Sarah Breedlove, Madam C.J. Walker, born December 23, 1867

Sarah Breedlove was born on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana. Her parents and elder siblings were slaves on a Madison Parish plantation owned by Robert W. Burney. Born two years after the end of the Civil War, Sarah was the first child in her family born into freedom










Maine

Dorothea Dix, born April 4, 1802

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born April 4, 1802, in the town of  Hampden, Maine.   She was 59 years old when the Civil War began. 












Maryland

Roger Taney, born March 17, 1777
Roger Brooke Taney was born March 17, 1777. He was the third child and the second son of seven (four sons and three daughters) born to a slaveholding family of Roman Catholic tobacco planters in Calvert County, Maryland. He was 84 years old when the Civil War began, and died 3 years later, before it ended.

Frederick Douglass 
born ca. February 14, 1818
Frederick Douglass was born as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, a slave at Holme Hill Farm, Talbot County, Maryland. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was a field slave from whom he was separated during his infancy. Douglass never knew for certain whom his father was. He did know that his father was white, and he believed he was their owner, Aaron Anthony.  Douglass was 43 years old when the Civil War began; he had escaped from slavery more than 20 years earlier. 





Harriet Tubman, born ca. 1822

Araminta "Minty" Ross, who was later known as Harriet Tubman, was born to slave parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross in Maryland, in the early 1820s.  Neither the exact year nor place of her birth was recorded. The year 1822 is based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including a later runaway advertisement.  She was probably born on Anthony Thompson’s plantation in Dorchester County, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. At some point in her young adult life, Minty began calling herself "Harriet" Tubman; she was approximately 40 years old when the Civil War began.






Massachusetts

Lucretia Coffin Mott 
born January 3, 1793
Lucretia Coffin, born on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts,  was the second child of Anna Folger and Thomas Coffin, Jr.  Her parents were Quakers; Thomas Coffin was a ship captain, and Anna Coffin was a shopkeeper.  On April 10, 1811, at the age of 18, Lucretia Coffin married James Mott at Pine Street Meeting in Philadelphia.  Mott was 68 years old when the Civil War began; she and her husband were living in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in April 1861.

Charles Lenox Remond, born February 1, 1810

Charles Lenox Remond was the eldest son of eight children born in Salem, Massachusetts to John Remond, a haridresser who was a native of the Caribbean island of Curaçao, and Nancy Lenox Remond, daughter of a prominent Bostonian, a hairdresser and caterer. Remond was 51 years old when the Civil War began; he was living in Massachusetts with his family.













Margaret Fuller, born May 23, 1810

Sarah Margaret Fuller was born May 23, 1810, in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, the first child of Timothy Fuller, an attorney, and Margaret Crane Fuller. The Fullers were descended from Thomas Fuller, a pious and poetry-writing Englishman who settled in Salem in 1638. Timothy’s father, a clergyman, had opposed the signing of the United States Constitution on the grounds that it condoned human slavery. She died 11 years before the Civil War began, at the age of 40.

Susan B. Anthony, born February 15, 1820
Susan Brownwell Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts to Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read Anthony.  She was the second of seventh children. She was 41 years old when the Civil War began.

Emily Parsons, born March 8, 1824
Emily Parsons was born on March 8, 1824 in Taunton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Professor Theophilus Parsons of the Harvard Law School and granddaughter of the late Chief Justice Parsons of Massachusetts.  She was 37 years old and living in Cambridge at the beginning of the Civil War.

George Francis Train, born March 24, 1832
George Francis Train was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1829, son of Oliver Train and his wife Maria, née Pickering. Oliver Train was a wealthy shipper who had founded a line of packet ships.  When George was four, he and his older sister, Adeline, were orphaned in the yellow fever epidemic of 1833 in New Orleans, which killed  their parents and three sisters when the family was visiting the southern port.  George Francis Train was 32 years old when the Civil War began.

Grenville Dodge, born April 12, 1831

Grenville Mellen Dodge was born in Putnamville, Massachsetts, to Sylvanus and Julia Theresa Phillips Dodge. He was 30 years old when the Civil War began.

Angelina Weld Grimké, born February 27, 1880

Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 27, 1880, 15 years after the end of the Civil War. Her father, Archibald Grimké was born a slave. He was the eldest of three sons of Nancy Weston, an enslaved woman of European and African descent, and her master Henry W. Grimké. They lived in a common-law relationship, and Grimké recognized his sons. Henry Grimké was a member of a prominent, large slaveholding family in Charleston. Archibald Grimké was a lawyer, the second African American to have graduated from Harvard Law School. Angelina's mother, Sarah Stanley, was European American from a Midwestern middle-class family.

Michigan

Lorina Ann Blair Etheridge Hooks, born May 3, 1839
Lorinda Anna Blair was born May 3, 1839 in Detroit, Michigan, the only child of her parents. She was 22 years old when the Civil War be

Mississippi

Carnot Posey, born August 5, 1818

Carnot Posey was born near Woodville in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, the second son and fourth of eight children of planter John Brooke Posey and Elizabeth Screven Posey. He was 42 years old when the Civil War began.

Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey, born February 16, 1829

Sarah Anne Ellis was born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1829 to Mary Malvina Routh and Thomas George Percy Ellis, both from wealthy planter families, She was 32 years old when the Civil War began.

Missouri

John Marmaduke, born March 14, 1833
The fourth child and second son among ten children, Marmaduke was born on his father's plantation near Arrow 











Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain, born November 30, 1835

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, the son of Jane (née Lampton; 1803–1890), a native of Kentucky, and John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), from a Virginia family that owned slaves. Sam, named after his father's father, was the sixth of seven children.  Sam Clemens was 25 years old when the Civil War began.









New Hampshire

Charles Anderson Dana, 
born August 8, 1819
Charles Anderson Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, the first child of Anderson and Ann Denison Dana. His paternal grandfather was a Revolutionary War soldier and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.  His father. Anderson Dana, was a merchant who failed in business when his oldest son was a few years old. Charles Dana was 41 years old when the Civil War began.

George Nelson Stone, born July 17, 1839
George Nelson Stone was born in Stark, New Hampshire. When he was three years old, his parents with their three sons and five daughters moved to Lowell, Massachusetts. At ten years old, he was office boy for a year for Benjamin F. Butler, who was a successful attorney in Lowell. He was 21 years old when the Civil War began.








New Jersey

John Woolman, 
born October 19, 1720
John Woolman was the fourth child and eldest son in a family of thirteen children belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).  His father Samuel Woolman was a farmer. The family farm was in Burlington County of the New Jersey colony.  John was named after his father's father, one of the early Quaker settlers of New Jersey.  John Woolman died 87 years before the Civil War began.


John McLean, born March 11, 1785

John McLean was born in Morris County, New Jersey, on March 11, 1785, the son of Fergus McLean and Sophia Blackford. He was born two years after the end of the Revolutionary War, and died a week before the beginning of the Civil War.

Benjamin Lundy
born January 4, 1789
Benjamin Lundy was born to Quaker parents at Greensville in Sussex County, New Jersey.  He was the only child of Joseph and Elizabeth Shotwell Lundy.  His mother died when he was four years old, and he was raised by his stepmother, Mary Titus Lundy.  As a boy, he worked on his father's farm, attending school for only brief periods.  He died 22 years before the Civil War began.









  

Grover Cleveland, born March 18, 1837
Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey to Richard Falley Cleveland and Ann Neal Cleveland. 















Cornelia Hancock, born February 8, 1840

Cornelia Hancock was born in 1840 at Hancock's Bridge, Salem County, New Jersey to Thomas Yorke and Rachel (Nicholson) Hancock, she was the fourth child and third daughter in this Quaker abolitionist family. Hancock was 21 years old when the Civil War began; she became a nurse two years later.









New York

William Seward, born May 16, 1801
William Henry Seward was born in Florida, New York on May 16, 1801, the fourth of six children born to Samuel Sweezy Seward and his wife Mary Jennings Seward. At the time there were only a dozen buildings in the village of Florida. The Seward house consisted of 5 rooms on the main floor with a staircase leading to a large loft made up of 2 bedrooms with sloping walls and a large chimney. The Sewards owned three slaves who lived in the kitchen and the attic above it. He was 60 years old when the Civil War began.





James McCune Smith, born April 18, 1813

James McCune Smith was born free in 1813 in New York City, New York; his mother, Lavinia Smith, was a slave from South Carolina who had been brought to New York by her master. He was 48 years old when the Civil War began; he would die five months after it ended.









Elizabeth Cady Stanton, born November 12, 1815

Elizabeth Cady was the eighth of 11 children born to Daniel and Margaret Livingston Cady in Johnstown, in what later became Fulton County, New York.  Daniel Cady was a prominent Federalist attorney who, at the time of Elizabeth's birth, was serving a term in the United States Congress. As a young lawyer, he worked with Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Daniel Cady later became a circuit court judge and, in 1847 to 1854, a New York Supreme Court justice.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton was 45 years old when the Civil War began; she was the mother of seven children, aged two to nineteen years.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, born March 24, 1826
Matilda Joslyn was born March 24, 1826, in Cicero, New York, a daughter of the abolitionist Hezekiah Joslyn and his wife, Helen Leslie.  She was 35 years 

Mary Edwards Walker, born November 26, 1832
Mary Edwards Walker was born in the town of Oswego, New York, the daughter of Alvah and Vesta Whitcomb Walker, who was a cousin of Robert Ingersoll. Mary was the youngest of five daughters: Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia; they had one younger brother, Alvah, Jr.  Mary Walker was 28 years old when the Civil War began.

Robert Ingersoll, born August 11, 1833
Robert Green Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York, the youngest of five children of John and Mary Livingston Ingersoll: Ruth, John, Mary  Jane, Ebon Clark and Robert. Shortly before Robert's birth, Mary Ingersoll circulated a petition to Congress that slavery be abolished in Washington, D.C. Robert's middle name, "Green", was in honor of Reverend Beriah Green, a reformer and abolitionist. The family called him "Bob".   He was 27 years old when the Civil War began.






Elizabeth Hamilton Halleck, born February 9, 1835

Elizabeth Hamilton was born February 9, 1835 in Westernville, New York. She was 26 years old when the Civil War began.

Elmer Ellsworth, born April 11, 1837

Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth was born in Malta, New York. Ellsworth celebrated his 24th birthday the day before Fort Sumter was surrendered and the Civil War began. He died six weeks later.

Mary White Ovington, born April 11, 1865
Mary White Ovington was born in Brooklyn, New York a few days before the end of the Civil War.

North Carolina

William R. King, born April 7, 1785

William Rufus DeVane King was born in Sampson County, North Carolina, the second son of William King and Margaret DeVane. He died 8 years before the Civil War began.

Levi Coffin, 
born October 28, 1798
Levi Coffin was born on a farm near New Garden in Guilford County, North Carolina, the son of Levi Coffin Sr. and Prudence Williams Coffin.  He was a descendant of Tristam Coffin, who came to America in 1642 and was one of nine purchasers of Nantucket from the Indians.  Levi's father had been born in in 1763.  In 1773, before the American Revolution, a large group of Quakers emigrated from Nantucket to North Carolina; Levi's grandfather, William Coffin, established a family farm in the New Garden community. William and Priscilla Coffin had ten children--eight sons and two daughters--all of whom lived to have families of their own. All were members of the Religious Society of Friends. Levi Coffin was 62 years old when the Civil War began.

G.W. Logan, born February 22, 1815

George Washington Logan was born February 22, 1815 in Chimney Rock, Rutherford County, North Carolina. He was 46 years old when the Civil War began.















Zebulon Vance, born May 13, 1830

Zebulon Baird Vance was born at the family homestead along Reems Creek in Buncombe County, North Carolina, the third child and second son of eight children. His parents were David Vance II and Mira Margaret Baird Vance. Vance was named for his maternal grandfather, Zebulon Baird. He was 31 years old when the Civil War began.

Ohio

Edwin Stanton, born December 19, 1814

Edwin McMasters Stanton was born in Steubenville, Ohio, the first child of David and Lucy Norman Stanton. His father was from a Quaker family, but was obliged to leave the Society of Friends when he married Lucy, who was a Methodist.  Lucy Norman was the daughter of a wealthy Virginia planter and miller.  Edwin Stanton was 46 years old when the Civil War began.

William Tecumseh Sherman, born February 8, 1820
William Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio. His father, Charles Robert Sherman, a successful lawyer who sat on the Ohio Supreme Court, died unexpectedly in 1829. Sherman was 41 years old when the Civil War began; he was superintendent of the Louisiana State Semimary of Learning & Military Academy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He resigned as superintendent and became president of the Saint Louis Railroad in Saint Louis, Missouri, until he received a commission in the Union Army in June, 1861.

Clement Vallandigham, born July 29, 1820
Clement Laird Vallandigham was born New Lisbon, Ohio (now Lisbon, Ohio), the fifth of seven children of Clement Vallandigham, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife Rebecca Laird Vallandigham. He was 41 years old when the Civil War began.

Abram Piatt, born May 2, 1821
Abram Sanders Piatt was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Benjamin McCullough Piatt of Ohio and Elizabeth Barnett of Virginia. He was 40 years old when the Civil War began.












John Sherman, born May 10, 1823

John Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio to Mary Hoyt Sherman and Charles Robert Sherman, a justice in the Ohio Supreme Court. He was the eighth child in the family that would eventually number eleven children: six sons and five daughters. He was 39 years old when the Civil War began.









George Pendleton, born July 19, 1825

George Hunt Pendleton was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the fourth of seven children in the wealthy and prominent family of  Nathanael Greene Pendleton.  Nathanael Greene Pendleton served in the War of 1812 and was one of Ohio's representatives in the United States Congress.  George Pendleton was 36 years old when the Civil War began.

Peter Humphries Clark, born March 29, 1829
Peter Humprhies Clark was born March 29, 1829 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Peter Humphries Clark was 32 years old when the Civil War began. 

Alexander McCook, born April 22, 1831

Alexander McDowell McCook was born the fifth son of Daniel and Margaret McCook in Columbiana County, Ohio. He was 30 years old when the Civil War began.

Albion Tourgee, born May 2, 1838

Albion Winegar Tourgée was born in rural Williamsfield, Ohio on May 2, 1838, the son of a Methodist farm family that migrated to the Western Reserve from Massachusetts. He was 23 years old when the Civil War began.

George Elstner, born March 14, 1842
George Elstner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio where he lived until the Civil War began.  He was 19 years old at the beginning of the war. He was killed while leading his regiment at the Battle of Utoy Creek on August 8, 1864 near Atlanta, Georgia when he was 22 years old. 









Oklahoma

Ralph Ellison, born March 1, 1914
Ralph Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap. He was the grandson of former slaves.  Ellison was born about 50 years after the end of the Civil War.






Pennsylvania

Thomas Garrett, 

born August 21, 1789
Thomas Garrett was born on August 21, 1789, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, the son of Thomas Garret, Sr. and Sarah Price Garrett, members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Thomas was the third surviving son of eleven children. The family lived on their homestead,"Thornfield," in Delaware County. As abolitionists, the family hid runaway slaves in their farmhouse The family's house still stands today in what is now Drexel Hill. Thomas Garrett was 71 years old when the Civil War began.

Simon Cameron, born March 9, 1799

Simon Cameron was born in Maytown, Pennsylvania, the third son of Charles Cameron, a poor tailor, and Martha Pfoutz. He was 62 years old when the Civil War began.

Mother Angela Gillespie, born February 21, 1824

Eliza Maria Gillespie was in Washington county, Pennsylvania, on February 21, 1824, the daughter of John Purcell Gillespie and Mary Madeleine Miers.  Her mother was a convert to the Roman Catholic Church. Her cousin, James G. Blaine, was an early playmate. Eliza Maria first attended the school of the Dominican sisters at Somerset, Ohio, and completed her studies at the Visitation Convent at Georgetown in Washington, D.C., in 1844. She was 37 years old when the Civil War began.

Isaac Israel Hayes, born March 5, 1832
Isaac Israel Hayes was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania and raised in a Quaker family.  He was 29 old when the Civil War began.

Edward Needles Hallowell, born November 3, 1836

"Ned," as he was known to family and friends, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a well-to-do Quaker abolitionist family. His father, Morris Longstreth Hallowell was part owner and operator of Hallowell & Company, which imported and sold silk from India and China. Morris and Hannah Penrose Hallowell had a family of eight children; Ned was the third son. He was named for Edward Needles, president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, a friend of the family. The family's homes were used as stops on the Underground Railroad. Ned's two older brothers were William and Richard a younger brother, Norwood Penrose, known as "Pen", also served in the Union Army during the war. Edward Hallowell was 24 years old when the Civil War began. He died 10 years later of causes related to his wartime service.

Alexander Kelly, born April 7, 1840

Alexander Kelly was born in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania in 1840. He was 21 years old when the Civil War began.

Rhode Island

Sullivan Ballou, born March 28, 1829

Sullivan Ballou was the son of Hiram and Emeline (Bowen) Ballou, a distinguished Hugenot family in Smithfield, Rhode Island.  He was 32 years old when the Civil War began, and died 3 months later at the First Battle of Bull Run.

South Carolina

John Laurens, born October 28, 1754

John Laurens was born on October 28, 1754 to Henry Laurens and and Eleanor Ball  Laurens in Charleston, South Carolina. The Laurens family were Huguenots who fled France for religious liberty. John Laurens died on August 27, 1782 at the age of 27, just weeks before the end of the Revolutionary War and 79 years before the start of the Civil War.










John Calhoun, born March 18, 1782

John Caldwell Calhoun was born in 1782, the fourth child and third son of Patrick Calhoun and his second wife, Martha Caldwell, in Abbeville District, South Carolina. He was born a year before the Revolutionary War ended, and died 11 years before the Civil War began.

Angelina Grimké, born February 26, 1805
Angelina Emily Grimké was born in Charleston, South Carolina to John Faucheraud Grimke, a wealthy Episcopalian lawyer, judge, planter, politician, slaveholder, Revolutionary War veteran and distinguished member of Charleston society. Angelina was 56 years old when the Civil War began; she was living with her husband, children, and sister, Sarah, in New Jersey. 

Robert Purvis,
born August 4th, 1810
Robert Purvis was born August 4, 1810 in Charleston, South Carolina, the second of three sons. His father was William Purvis, an English immigrant who was in business with his brothers as a cotton broker.  His mother, Harriet Judah, was a woman of color.  Robert and his two brothers (William, born in 1806, and Joseph, born in 1812) were three-quarters European by ancestry.  Robert Purvis was 50 years when the Civil War began.

Louis Trezevant Wigfall, born April 21, 1816

Louis Wigfall was born on a plantation near Edgefield, South Carolina, to Levi Durant and Eliza Thomson Wigfall.  He was 45 years old when the Civil War began.

Wade Hampton III, born March 28, 1818

Wade Hampton III was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest son of  Wade Hampton II, one of the wealthiest planters in the South and the owner of the largest number of slaves.  He was 42 years old when the Civil War began.

Mary Boykin Chesnut. born March 31, 1823

Mary Boykin Miller was born on March 31, 1823, on her maternal grandparents'  plantation, Mount Pleasant, near Stateburg, South Carolina. She was 38 years old when the Civil War began.

Martin Witherspoon Gary, born March 25, 1831
Martin Witherspoon Gary was born in Cokesbury, South Carolina, the third son of Dr. Thomas Reeder Gary and Mary Ann Porter. He was 30 years old when the Civil War began.

Joseph Rainey, born June 21, 1832

Joseph Hayne Rainey was born into slavery in Georgetown, South Carolina, a seaside town consisting mainly of rice plantations. He and his brother, Edward Jr., were of mixed race; their mother, Grace, was of African and French descent. Their father, Edward Rainey, had been allowed to earn money by creating a successful business as a barber, though he paid a portion of his income to his master as required by law. He saved enough by the 1840s to purchase his freedom and that of his wife and sons. Joseph Rainey was 29 years old when the Civil War began.

Evander McIver Law, 
born August 7, 1836
Evander McIver Law was born in Darlington, in Darlington County, South Carolina. He was the first child and oldest son of eleven children born to Ezekiel Augustus Law, an attorney, judge and legislator, and Sarah Elizabeth “Bettie” McIver. His paternal grandfather, William Law, at the age of sixteen became a soldier in the Revolutionary armies. A maternal great-grandfather, Abel Kolb, fought in the American Revolutionary War under Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox" guerilla leader. His maternal grandfather, E. R. McIver. was a prominent citizen of South Carolina; during the nullification troubles in the 1830s, he was commissioned as a Brigadier-General of South Carolina troops, when the state was threatening to leave the Union and raising an army. Evander McIver Law was 24 years old when the Civil War began.

Robert Smalls, born April 5, 1839

Robert Smalls was born in 1839 into slavery, in a cabin behind the house of his master John McKee in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was 22 years old when the Civil War began.













Tennessee

John Rankin, 
born Febuary 5, 1793
John Rankin was born in Jefferson County, Tennessee , the fourth son of Richard and Jane Steele Rankin. Following the birth of their first son, Richard and Jane Rankin had moved to eastern Tennessee from Virginia.  Richard and Jane Rankin would raise eleven sons and one daughter.  Religion and reading played key roles in their childhoods. They were staunch Presbyterians; Jane “earnestly opposed the use of whiskey and tobacco, and zealously spoke against Free Masonry”. She also strongly opposed dance and frolicking in any form. The most important and lasting impression Jane made on John was her unyielding opposition to slavery. He was 68 years old when the Civil War began.

Isham Harris, born February 10, 1818
Isham Green Harris was born in Franklin County, Tennessee. He was the ninth child of Isham Green Harris, a slave-holding farmer and Methodist minister, and his wife Lucy Davidson Harris. Harris was 43 years old when the Civil War began; he was governor of Tennessee. Harris and the legislature were for secession and the Confederacy, but the Union Army invaded and occupied Nashville. Harris joined the Confederate Army.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, born July 13, 1821

Nathan Bedford Forrest was born to a poor family near Chapel Hill in Bedford County, Tennessee. He and his twin sister, Fanny, were the two eldest of blacksmith William Forrest's children with wife Mariam Beck. Bedford, as he was called, was named for his grandfather and the county in which he was born.  He had five younger brothers: John, William, Aaron, Jesse,  and Jeffrey.  The other children, including Nathan's twin sister, Fanny, died as children.  When the Civil War began. Nathan Bedford Forrest was 40 years old and a millionaire.  He was one of the richest men in the South, having amassed a personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million.

Jefferson C. Davis, born March 2, 1828
Jefferson Columbus Davis was the first of eight children born near present-day Memphis, in Clark County, Indiana to William Davis and Mary Drummond. He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.

Henry Thomas Harrison, born April 23, 1832

Henry Thomas Harrison, the son of Henry Hargrove Harrison and Rebecca Pearson Harrison, was born near Nashville on April 23, 1832.  He was 29 years old when the Civil War began.

Martha Ready Morgan, born June 21, 1840
Martha Ready was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee on June 21, 1840. She was the sixth of eight children born to Colonel Charles Ready, Jr. and Martha Strong Ready. She was 21 years old when the Civil War began.











Texas

Milton Holland, 
born August 1st, 1844

Milton Murray Holland was born August 1, 1844 in Texas, as the son of slaves on Holland Plantation. Although the record shows his parents as being John and Matilda Holland, slaves on the plantation, his light complexion has led historians to speculate that his real father was Bird Holland, the brother of Spearman Holland, their owner. Bird Holland was believed to be the father of three sons by Matilda: William, born in 1841, Milton and James. Milton had three known brothers, William, James, and Toby, all part of the third generation of African-Americans born as slaves on the Holland Family Plantation. Milton Holland was 17 years old when the Civil War began; he was still attending school in Athens County, Ohio.

Vermont

Thaddeus Stevens, born April 4, 1792

Thaddeus Stevens was born in Danville, Vermont on April 4, 1792.   He was 69 years old when the Civil War began.

James Fisk, born April 1, 1835

James Fisk, Jr. was born in the hamlet of Pownal, Vermont.  He was 26 years old when the Civil War began.

Cyrus Pringle, born May 6, 1838

Cyrus Guernsey Pringle was born on May 6, 1838 in East Charlotte, Vermont. He was 23 years old when the Civil War began.

Virginia

Robert Carter III, born February 28, 1727
Robert Carter III was born in Virginia in 1727, the son of Robert Carter II and Priscilla Chu












Henry Clay, born April 12, 1777

Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777, at the Clay homestead in Hanover County, Virginia. He was born two years after the Revolutionary War began, and died nine years before the Civil War began.














Samuel Phillips Lee, born February 13, 1812

Samuel Phillips Lee was born February 13, 1812 at "Sully" in Fairfax County, Virginia to Francis Lightfoot Lee II and Jane Fitzgerald Lee. He was 49 years old when the Civil War began.








Martin Delany, born May 6, 1812

Martin Robison Delany was born free in Charles Town, Virginia (later West Virginia) to Pati Peace and Samuel Delany. Although his father, Samuel, was an enslaved carpenter, his mother was a free woman and a seamstress. He was 49 years old when the Civil War began.

Wilmer McLean, born May 3, 1814
Wilmer McLean was born on May 3, 1814 in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 47 years old when the Civil War began.

George Thomas, born July 31, 1816

George Henry Thomas was born at Thomaston, near Newsom's Depot, in Southampton County, Virginia. His father, John Thomas, of Welsh descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas, a descendant of French Huguenot immigrants, had nine children. George was the youngest of the three boys; he had six sisters. He was 44 years old when the Civil War began.

John Wayles Jefferson, born May 8, 1835
John Wayles Hemings was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, on May 8, 1835, the first son of Eston Hemings, a former slave who was seven-eights of European descent, and Julia Ann Isaacs, the mixed-race daughter of a wealty Jewish merchant. John is believed to have been the grandson of Sarah ("Sally") Hemings, a slave, and her master, Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. John was 26 years old when the Civil War began.

Powhatan Beaty, 
born October 8, 1837
Powhatan Beaty was born into slavery in Richmond, Virginia. It is unknown when and how he escaped slavery. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1849. While in school, he developed an interest in theater and made his public acting debut at a school concert. After leaving school, he was apprenticed to Henry Boyd, a black furniture maker, and became an experienced wood lathe operator. Powhatan Beaty was 23 years old when the Civil War began.






William Harvey Carney, born February 29, 1840

He was born simply as "William," a slave in Norfolk, Virginia. He was 21 years old when the Civil War began.
















James Edward Hanger, born February 25, 1843

James Edward Hanger was born at Mount Hope, his father's plantation near Churchville, Virginia. He was 18 years old when the Civil War began. 

Belle Boyd, born May 9, 1843
Isabella Marie Boyd was born in Berkeley County, Virginia, the eldest child of Benjamin Reed and Mary Rebecca (Glenn) Boyd. The Boyds and the Glenns were well-known families of the area. Belle's grandfather, James Glenn, served in the Revolutionary War and was presented several awards by General George Washington for outstanding service. Members of the Boyd family were merchants and owned several general stores in the area. She was 18 years old when the Civil War began.

Thomas Nelson Page, born April 23, 1853
Thomas Nelson Page was born at Oakland, one of the Nelson family plantations, in Hanover County, Virginia.

Washington, D.C.

Richard Ewell, 
born February 8, 1817
Richard Stoddert Ewell was born in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., the third son of Dr. Thomas and Elizabeth Stoddert Ewell.  He was raised in Prince William County, Virginia, from the age of 3, at an estate near Manassas known as "Stony Lonesome." He was 44 years old when the Civil War began.

Joseph Evan Davis, born April 18, 1859

"Joe" Davis was born on April 18,1859, in Washington, D.C., the son of Senator Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina Howell Davis.  He was 2 years old when the Civil War began; he died 3 years later on April 30, 1864, in a fall at the Confederate White House in Richmond, Virginia, two weeks after his fifth birthday.

Canada

Anderson Abbott, born April 7, 1837
Anderson Ruffin Abbott was born in Toronto, Canada, the son of Wilson Ruffin Abbott and and Ellen (Toyer) Abbott. He was 24 years old when the Civil War began.

England

Fanny Kemble, born November 27, 1809
Frances Anne Kemble was born in London, England, on November 27, 1809, the daughter of the English actor, Charles Kemble, and his Viennese-born wife, Marie Therese De Camp, a ballet dancer and actress. She first went to the United States in 1832, at the age of 23.  The 30-day voyage was the first of the 18 trans-Atlantic crossings Kemble made in her lifetime. She was 51 years old when the Civil War began.

Edward Dickinson Baker, born February 24, 1811
Edward Baker was born in London, England in 1811 to schoolteacher Edward Baker and Lucy Dickinson Baker, poor but educated Quakers. He was fifty years old when the Civil War began.

"Madame Restell" (Ann Trow Lohman), born May 6, 1812
Ann Caroline Trow was born in Painswick, Gloucestershire, England. Her father, John Trow, was a woolen mill laborer. She was 49







Jean Davenport, born May 3, 1829

Jean Margaret Davenport was born May 3, 1829, in Wolverhampton, England. She was 32 years old when the Civil War began.














Germany

Edward von Westphalen, born March 26, 1819

Edgar Julius Oscar Gerhard Ludwig von Westphalen was born March 26 1819 in Trier, Germany.  He was a son of the royal Prussian Governor, Ludwig von Westphalen, and his second wife Caroline Heubel.  His father was a friend of Heinrich Marx, the father of Karl Marx, and the children of both families became friends. Edgar von Westphalen was 42 years old when the American Civil War began.

Henry Villard (Heinrich Hilgard), born April 10, 1835 

He was born and raised as Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in Speyer, in the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kingdom of B

Hubert Dilger, born March 5, 1836
Hubert Anton Casimir Dilger was born in Engen in the Black Forest region in Germany on March 5, 1836. He was 25 years old when the Civil War began.













Ireland

David Sinton, born June 26, 1808
David Sinton was born in County Armagh, Ireland, the son of Quaker linen manufacturer John Sinton, of Unshinagh, and Mary McDonnell Sinton. John Sinton was a cousin of Irish Quaker industrialist brothers, Thomas and John Sinton. The Sintons, like so many of Northern Ireland's linen families, were Quakers. David Sinton was 53 years old when the Civil War began.

Patrick Cleburne,

born March 16, 1828

Patrick Ronayne Cleburne was born in Ovens, County Cork, Ireland, the third child and second son of Dr. Joseph Cleburne, a physician, and Mary Anne Ronayne Cleburne. He was born the day before St. Patrick's Day.  He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.









Phillip Sheridan, born March 6, 1831

Philip Henry Sheridan claimed to have been born in Albany, New York, the third child of six by John and Mary Meenagh Sheridan, immigrants from the parish of Killinkere, County Cavan, Ireland.   Other accounts indicate that he may have been born at sea while his parents were immigrating from Ireland. He was 30 years old when the Civil War began.

Myles Walter Keogh, born March 25, 1840
Myles Keogh was born in Orchard House, County Carlow, Ireland on March 25, 1840. He was 21 years old when the Civil War began.

Prussia - Silesia

Henry Mosler, born June 6, 1841

Henry Mosler was born in Tropplowitz, Prussian Silesia (now in Poland), the first son of Gustavus and Sophia Weiner Mosler.  The family would eventually grow to eight children: five sons and three daughters. Henry Mosler was 20 years old when the Civil War began in 1861.  

Scotland

John Muir, 
born April 21, 1838

John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, the oldest son of Daniel and Ann Gilrye Muir. He was the third of eight children in the family.  In 1849, when John was eleven yearfamily immigrated to the United States.  Muir was 23 years old when the Civil War began.

Europe

Grave of Felix Moses
"A Confederate Soldier and A True Friend"
United Jewish Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio

Unknown

Adah Isaacs Menken, born June 15, 1835

Adah Isaacs Menken was also known as Adelaide McCord and Ada Bertha Théodore. Because Menken told so many version of her origins, including name, place of birth, ancestry, and religion, historians have differed in their accounts. Most have said she was born a Louisiana Creole Catholic of mixed race, with European and African ancestry. She was variously reported to have been born in New York, Havana, and other places. She was said to have been born of a distinguished, old Southern family; another account claimed she was born in Arkansas of a French mother and an American-Indian father. She was 26 years old when the Civil War began.