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H.R. Stoughton
(1836 - 1902)
Home State: Vermont
Command Billet: Commanding Company
Branch of Service: Sharpshooters
Before Antietam
He began a lifelong career on the Vermont Central Railroad (VCRR) at age 17, about 1853, and was agent at several stations before the War. A resident of Randolph, VT, he enrolled 25 September 1861 as Captain, Company E, 2nd US Sharpshooters.
On the Campaign
He led his Company in Maryland, and was promoted Major of the Regiment "on the field at Antietam" on 17 September 1862. He later wrote of the Regiment at Antietam:
While lying on their faces on the open ground they did more damage to the enemy than any brigade in our front or to our right, we firing obliquely. Into the field opposite and in front of Campbell's battery were put in one grave 192 of the enemy ...
The rest of the War
He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 24 June 1863, and was in action at Gettysburg, PA in July 1863, where he commanded the Regiment. He was wounded in the chest in action at Spotsylvania Court House, VA on 10 May 1864, and was captured in action at Petersburg, VA on 21 June of that year. He was held at Libby Prison, Richmond, and at camps in Macon, GA and Columbia, SC. He was paroled about 9 December 1864 and mustered out on 23 January 1865.
After the War
He returned to his work as station agent for the VCRR until 1885, when he went to Shelby, AL, and was successively auditor, general manager, and vice president of the Shelby Iron Company. When the Company was sold in 1891, he went into the real estate business in Cleveland, OH, living in Oberlin. He then returned to Vermont and the Railroad. He was agent at Barre, VT to 1895, then Superintendent of the Montpelier & White River Division, VCRR. He died suddenly of apoplexy (stroke or cerebral hemorrhage) at a ball game, while visiting his brother Henry in Otsego, MI in 1902 at age 65.
References & notes
Service from Peck1 and Stevens.2 His picture from a photograph at the Library of Congress. Details from a bio sketch and obituaries posted online by Tom Ledoux on his fabulous Vermont in the Civil War website. Stoughton's gravesite is on Findagrave.
Birth
11/13/1836; Quechee, VT
Death
09/07/1902; Otsego, MI; burial in Elmwood Cemetery, Barre, VT
1 Peck, Theodore S., Adjutant General, and The Vermont Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, Revised Roster of Vermont Volunteers and Lists of Vermonters who Served in the Army and Navy of the United States During the War of the Rebellion 1861-66, Montpelier: Press of the Watchman Publishing Co., 1892, pg. 611 [AotW citation 17519]
2 Stevens, Charles Augustus, Berdan's United States Sharpshooters in the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865, St. Paul (MN): The Price-McGill Company, 1892, pp. 202, 419, 464, 535 [AotW citation 17520]