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H.B. Titus
(1832 - 1905)
Home State: New Hampshire
Education: Yale College
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
A former Yale student and 27 year old teacher and county commissioner of schools in Chesterfield, NH, he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant, Company A, 2nd New Hampshire Infantry on 31 May 1861 and served as a Signal Officer from January - June 1862. He was discharged 1 July 1862 to accept commission as Major, 9th New Hampshire Infantry, to date from 14 June. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 26 August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was wounded in the shoulder or side in action near the lower ("Burnside") bridge at Antietam on 17 September 1862:
Among the officers who were severely wounded were Lieut. Col. Herbert B. Titus and Captains John B. Cooper and Smith O. Whitfield. Lieut. Col. Titus was himself taking an active part in the conflict, having picked up the rifle of a disabled soldier, when he was struck in the side by a bullet and compelled to leave the field. As the word was passed along the line, expressions of sorrow and regret were heard on all sides.
The rest of the War
He was treated at a hospital in Chambersburg, PA and was promoted to Colonel of the regiment on 22 November 1862 after Colonel Fellows resigned. He was discharged for disability on 27 September 1864 but was again commissioned 1 November 1864. He was honored by brevet to Brigadier General of Volunteers on 13 March 1865 and mustered out on 10 June 1865 in Alexandria, VA.
After the War
For about three years immediately after the war he was a "special agent" of the US government, collecting captured and abandoned property in the South and recovering Confederate ships in England and France. From about 1868-1870 he farmed in Virginia, and then practiced law in Washington, DC and New York City in the firm Hovey & Titus. Hovey died in 1895 and Colonel Titus retired to Brattleboro, VT in 1898.
References & notes
Service from Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire.1 The quote above and other details from the History.2 Hospital detail from Nelson.3 Post-war information from the Biographical Record of the Class of Fifty-eight, Yale College (1908) and a sketch in the History of Cheshire and Sullivan counties, New Hampshire (1886). His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph in the Library of Congress.
Birth
12/10/1832; Chesterfield, NH
Death
06/01/1905; Brattleboro, VT; burial in Ware-Joslyn Cemetery, Chesterfield, VT
1 State of New Hampshire, Adjutant-General's Office, and Augustus D. Ayling, AG, Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion 1861-1866 , 2 Volumes, Concord: Ira C. Evans, Public Printer, 1895, Vol. 1, pg. 504 [AotW citation 20311]
2 Lord, Edward O., History of the Ninth Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion, Concord: Republican Press Association, 1895, pp. 122, 742-743 [AotW citation 20312]
3 Nelson, John H., As Grain Falls Before the Reaper: The Federal Hospital Sites and Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Hagerstown: John H. Nelson, 2004, pg. 413 [AotW citation 20313]