Rufus Robinson Dawes

Rufus Dawes graduated from Marietta College in 1860. In 1861, at the start of the War, he was 22 years old and organized a volunteer unit from Mauston (Wisconsin) - where he was working - called the Lemonweir Minute Men. Dawes was elected Captain of that company, which later became Company K of the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment, attached to the First Corps of the Union Army. The regiment left Wisconsin and arrived in Washington D.C. on 28 July 1861. For the first year of the war, Dawes remained in Washington and saw no major action.

In June 1862 he was promoted Major, and was first in combat at Second Bull Run.

He succeeded the wounded Lieutenant Colonel Bragg in command of the regiment on 17 September.

He was in action later at Fredericksburg in December, Chancellorsville (May y1863), Gettysburg (July), the Battle of the Wilderness (1864), and the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond.

In March 1863 he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel. At Gettysburg in July he captured 230 men of the 2nd Mississippi Regiment.

Dawes was mustered out of the army on 10 August 1864 after serving at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. He was honored by brevet rank of Brigadier General of Volunteers in March 1865.

He was in the wholesale lumber business in Marietta, Ohio, and was elected (Republican) to the US House of Representatives (1881-83), but lost a reelection attempt. He continued in the lumber business in Marietta for the remainder of his life.

Basic biography from the US Congress1. The photograph here from Uriguen2 (original source not known).

His memoirs - Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers (1890) - are online from the Internet Archives.

07/04/1838; Malta, OH

08/02/1899; Marietta, OH; burial in Oak Grove Cemetery, Marietta, OH