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J.W. Childs
(1834 - 1896)
Home State: Michigan
Education: Michigan State Normal School (now EMU)
Command Billet: Commanding Regiment
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 4th Michigan Infantry
Before Antietam
Oldest of 11 children of successful farmer Aaron Childs (1806-1882), in 1860 he was a 26 year old teacher (probably at the Ann Arbor Academy) living with his parents and 6 younger siblings in Augusta, Washtenaw County, MI. He was appointed Major at the formation of the 4th Michigan Infantry on 16 May 1861 at age 28. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 25 September and to Colonel on 1 July 1862.
On the Campaign
He commanded the regiment in reserve at Antietam on 17 September 1862 and in their brief action at Shepherdstown on the 19th and 20th, where they crossed the Potomac and captured (3-4?) guns of the Confederate rearguard under General Pendleton.
The rest of the War
He resigned his commission as Colonel and was honorably discharged on 25 November 1862.
He enrolled again, on 1 September 1863 at Arlington, VA, and was commissioned Captain of Company D, 2nd Regiment, US Colored Troops. He mustered out with them in January 1866, having served most of that time in Florida.
After the War
He began receiving a pension for disability in September 1870, then the surveyor of public lands at Gainesville in Alachua County, FL. By 1881 he was a clerk in the General Land Office, US Department of the Interior in Washington, DC and was still there at the veterans' census of 1890.
References & notes
His service from the Record,1 Bertera,2 and his Pension Cards, online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860 & 1870, Daniel Putnam's A History of the Michigan State Normal School (1899), the Official Register of the United States (1881), and his obituary in the Ann Arbor Courier of 3 June 1896, thanks to Jim Smith. His gravesite is on Findagrave; his stone has his birth in 1833. His picture from a photograph in the Michigan Archives.
He married Frances Crawford (1836-1871) in May 1866 in Apalachiclola, FL. He married again, Frances Eliza Gause (1840-1913) in 1873 and they had 2 daughters; one, Elaine (1874-1963), survived infancy.
Birth
03/14/1834; Fredonia, NY
Death
05/25/1896; Hanover, MD; burial in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA
1 State of Michigan, Office of the Adjutant General, and George H. Brown, Adjutant General; George H. Turner, Asst. AG, compiler, Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War, 1861-1865, 46 volumes, Kalamazoo: Ihling Bros. & Everard, 1904-1915 [AotW citation 32145]
2 Bertera, Martin Nino, The Old 4th Michigan Infantry, Published c. 1999, first accessed 18 May 2006, <http://4thmichiganinfantry.com/>, Source page: /PenisonPages/C/Childs.html [AotW citation 506]