Battle of Five Forks, April 1, 1865

The Battle of Five Forks was fought on April 1, 1865, southwest of Petersburg, Virginia around Five Forks, Dinwidde County. 

The battle pitted Union General Philip Sheridan against  Confederate General  George Pickett. Pickett's loss at Five Forks triggered Lee's decision to abandon his entrenchments around Petersburg and begin the retreat that led to his surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9.

The loss of Five Forks threatened Lee's best escape route, the South Side Railroad. The next morning, Sunday, April 2, Lee informed Confederate President Jefferson Davis that Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, must be evacuated.

Born after 1900

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.

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.

Born 1866-1899

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

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.

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.

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.

Born 1840-1865

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.












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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.





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.

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.

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





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.  

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.

Mary White Ovington, born April 11, 1865
Mary White Ovington was born in Brooklyn, New York a few days before the a

Born 1820-1839

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.





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.

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.

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.

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.

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.











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.



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.

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.

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.

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.













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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 

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

Felix Moses
born January 1, 1827

Felix Moses was a Jewish immigrant from Europe who came to Boone County, Kentucky in the 1850s. He was 34 years old when the Civil War began; he was a peddler in Kentucky, dealing mainly in furs and hides.

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 C

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.

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.

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 ha

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.

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.

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. 

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.



















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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.









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.

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.

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.

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 

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.



















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.

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 Bavaria.

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.

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.



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.

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.













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.

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.

  

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. Grover Clevelan

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.

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.

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.

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.  







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.

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 year

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.

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.

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.

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

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.