Luke Tiernan Brien

(1827 - 1912)
Home State: Maryland
Command Billet: Commanding Regiment
Branch of Service: Cavalry
Unit: 1st Virginia Cavalry

Before the Antietam Campaign:
Raised in Baltimore, he was educated at Georgetown (graduated 1846) and farmed in Baltimore County until 1854, when he bought a farm near Hagerstown. He served as volunteer aide to BGen. J.E.B. Stuart in 1861 and was at First Mananssas in July. He was commissioned Captain and Assistant Adjutant General (AAG) on the General's staff of on 24 September 1861, and appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st Virginia Cavalry in April 1862.

In the Antietam Campaign:
He was in command of the Regiment on the Maryland Campaign.

The remainder of the War:
He resigned his commission in the First Virginia on 30 September 1862, probably for reasons of health, and worked a plantation in North Carolina as overseer1. Apparently recovered, he took an appointment as Major and AAG on the staff of MGen. W.H.F. Lee in April 1864, and served to the end of the War, being paroled at Appomattox in April 1865.

After the War:
After the War he was a commission merchant in New York City, and general manager of the Illinois Central Railroad (1874-1882). He then bought farmland and mansion - formerly Landon House, Landon Military Academy, Shirley Female Academy - near Urbana, Maryland and resided there for the rest of his life.

References, Sources, and other notes:
Service data from Staff Officers2, with personal biographical details from Frederick County.3

More on the Web:
There's a grainy post-War photograph of him online from Find-a-grave.

Birth Date: 12/22/1827    Place of Birth: Frederick County, MD
College: Georgetown College
Death Date: 11/25/1912    Death Place: Frederick, MD    Burial Place: St. Ignatius-Loyola Cemetery, Urbana, MD

Notes

1 Trout, Robert J., They Followed the Plume, Mechanicsburg (Pa): Stackpole Books, 1993, pp. 74-75 [AotW citation 1137]

2 US War Department, List of Staff Officers of the Confederate States Army, 1861-1865, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1891 [AotW citation 570]

3 Williams, Thomas John Chew, and Folger McKinsey, History of Frederick County, Maryland, Frederick: Regional Publishing Co., 1910, Vol. 1, pp. 824-825 [AotW citation 1138]

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