site logo
[no picture yet]

[no picture yet]

Federal (USV)

Lieutenant

Samuel Hopkins Thompson

(1843 - 1862)

Home State: Connecticut

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 16th Connecticut Infantry

Before Antietam

He was the son of Theological Institute of Connecticut (now Hartford Theological Seminary) professor William Thompson and, at age 17 in 1860, lived with his family in South Windsor Hill, CT. He was a student at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Class of 1862, but may not have graduated before he enrolled on 13 August 1862 and mustered as First Lieutenant of Company H, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 24 August.

On the Campaign

He was in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He died "at home" on 22 October 1862, probably as a result of his presence at Antietam, but the specific cause is not clear.

References & notes

His service from the Adjutant General.1 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He was close friends, and possibly romantically involved, with Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844-1911). His death is given as the reason she wrote the best-selling novel The Gates Ajar (1868). Her first serious published work, A Sacrifice Consumed (Harpers, 1864), was specifically about him.

Birth

05/14/1843; East Windsor, CT

Death

10/22/1862; South Windsor, CT; burial in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, CT

Notes

1   State of Connecticut, Adjutant General's Office, and AGs Smith, Camp, and Barbour, and AAG White, Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the Army and Navy of the United States during the War of the Rebellion, Hartford: Press of the Case, Lockwood, and Brainard Company, 1889, pg. 633  [AotW citation 27245]