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J. Kies

J. Kies

Federal (USV)

Captain

John Kies

(? - 1880)

Home State: Connecticut

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 11th Connecticut Infantry

Before Antietam

From Killingly, CT, he enrolled on 25 September and was commissioned First Lieutenant, Company F, 11th Connecticut Infantry on the 27 November 1861. He was promoted to Captain on 29 May 1862 after Captain William Clapp resigned.

On the Campaign

He commanded his Company at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He was promoted to Major of the regiment on or before 10 July 1864, but that rank was revoked and he was discharged for disability due to illness effective the same date.

After the War

He was in the mercantile business in Killingly and, in the 1870s, a staunch Democrat, published the Weekly Herald in Windham County, CT.

When [Republican] General Grant visited Roseland Park the Herald printed his speech in full. It consisted of a headline and a whole column of blank space. Major Kies was a brave man in the Civil war but his rampant manner of conducting a country newspaper not only cost the shareholders what confidence and money they had invested, but the Major's political prestige as well ...
He served in the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1874, but was defeated in a run for the State Senate in 1875.

References & notes

Service information from the Record.1 The quote above from Allen B. Lincoln's A Modern History of Windham County, Connecticut (Vol. 1, 1920). Details from his death notice in the New Haven Morning Journal-Courier of 27 November 1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Thanks to Ken Tokarz and Audrey Kies-Tokarz for sharing their CDV of Captain Kies.

His son Fred E. Kies had his father's grave opened in 1897 to locate a presentation sword given the Major at New Brunswick, NC in 1863. The sword was in the coffin so Fred had it retrieved and polished. (from the Putnam Patriot, 1897, via the Killingly Villager [PDF] of 5 March 2010.)

More on the Web

See excellent posts from John Banks' Civil War Blog which include letters Captain Kies wrote to two Company F soldiers' next-of-kin after they were killed at Antietam - Pvt Fennimore Weeks and Pvt Daniel Tarbox.

Death

11/22/1880; Danielson, CT; burial in Westfield Cemetery, Danielson, CT

Notes

1   State of Connecticut, Adjutant General's Office, and AGs Smith, Camp, and Barbour, and AAG White, Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the Army and Navy of the United States during the War of the Rebellion, Hartford: Press of the Case, Lockwood, and Brainard Company, 1889, pg. 452  [AotW citation 20532]