John Kies

From Killingly, CT, he enrolled on 25 September and was commissioned First Lieutenant, Company F, 11th Connecticut Infantry on the 27 November 1861. He was promoted to Captain on 29 May 1862 after Captain William Clapp resigned.

He commanded his Company at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

He was promoted to Major of the regiment on or before 10 July 1864, but that rank was revoked and he was discharged for disability due to illness effective the same date.

He was in the mercantile business in Killingly and, in the 1870s, a staunch Democrat, published the Weekly Herald in Windham County, CT.

When [Republican] General Grant visited Roseland Park the Herald printed his speech in full. It consisted of a headline and a whole column of blank space. Major Kies was a brave man in the Civil war but his rampant manner of conducting a country newspaper not only cost the shareholders what confidence and money they had invested, but the Major's political prestige as well ...

Service information from the Record.1 The quote above from Allen B. Lincoln's A Modern History of Windham County, Connecticut (Vol. 1, 1920). Details from his death notice in the New Haven Morning Journal-Courier of 27 November 1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Thanks to Ken Tokarz and Audrey Kies-Tokarz for sharing their CDV of Captain Kies.

His son Fred E. Kies had his father's grave opened in 1897 to locate a presentation sword given the Major at New Brunswick, NC in 1863. The sword was in the coffin so Fred had it retrieved and polished. (from the Putnam Patriot, 1897, via the Killingly Villager [PDF] of 5 March 2010.)

See excellent posts from John Banks' Civil War Blog which include letters Captain Kies wrote to two Company F soldiers' next-of-kin after they were killed at Antietam - Pvt Fennimore Weeks and Pvt Daniel Tarbox.

11/22/1880; Danielson, CT; burial in Westfield Cemetery, Danielson, CT