Open main menu
Open main menu
C.W. Roberts
(1828 - 1898)
Home State: Maine
Education: Bowdoin College, Class of 1851
Command Billet: Commanding Regiment
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 2nd Maine Infantry
Before Antietam
Son of a wealthy lumber merchant, he was himself in the lumber business in Bangor. At age 32 he enrolled and was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel, 2nd Maine Infantry on 2 May 1861. He was promoted to Colonel on 29 August 1861 after Colonel C.D. Jameson was appointed Brigadier General.
On the Campaign
He commanded the regiment in Maryland. They were in reserve and not engaged at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He resigned his commission on 10 January 1863 citing ill health. He was honored in 1866 by a brevet to Brigadier General of Volunteers for his actions at Hanover Court House, VA in May 1862.
After the War
He was appointed Collector of Customs for Bangor by President Johnson. By 1870 and to at least 1880 he was a successful lumber dealer in Bangor, ME, and he was an unsuccessful candidate for governor of Maine in 1875. He was a senior officer in the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS).
References & notes
His service from the Adjutant General1 and Heitman.2 Personal details from a bio sketch in Nehemiah Cleaveland's History of Bowdoin College (1882), and from family genealogists and the US Census of 1870 & 1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph at the Library of Congress, which also has a standing portrait photograph of him.
He married Hannah Jane Peirce (1840-1906) in June 1867 and they had two daughters.
More on the Web
There's an excellent candid photograph of him in camp, online from the Maine Historical Society.
Birth
10/22/1828; Old Town, Penobscot County, ME
Death
03/23/1898; Bangor, ME; burial in Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor, ME
1 State of Maine, Adjutant General's Office, and John L. Hodsdon, AG, Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Maine for the Year ending December 31, 1862, Augusta: Stevens and Sayward, Printers to the State, 1863 [AotW citation 26156]
2 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, pg. 835 [AotW citation 26157]