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C.R. Train
(1817 - 1885)
Home State: Massachusetts
Education: Brown University (1837), Harvard Law
Branch of Service: Staff
Before Antietam
He was admitted to the bar and began to practice in Framingham, MA in 1841. He was a Representative in the State House (1847-48), district attorney (1848-54), and declined nomination to the US Supreme Court in 1852. He was elected to the US House of Representatives from Massachusetts in 1859 and again in 1861, to serve to March 1863.
He left his House seat and was appointed Captain and Assistant Quartermaster (AQM) of Volunteers on 4 September 1862 and joined Brigadier General Gordon's depleted staff in Washington, DC.
On the Campaign
He was with General Gordon on the Maryland Campaign. In his after-action Report the General said of him:
I owe especial thanks to the Hon. Charles R. Train, who volunteered his services on my staff at a time when fatiguing labor and most arduous service had deprived me of all my aides save one officer. This gentleman also has shown his willingness to lay down his life in his country's cause. The invasion of the loyal North called him from his Congressional duties and his home at a moment's notice. No fatigues, though excessive, no danger, though most perilous, deterred him from moving forward whenever he could render assistance in beating back the invading foe.
The rest of the War
He resigned his volunteer commission on 6 November 1862 and went to Boston.
After the War
He was again a state legislator (1868-71) and Attorney General of Massachusetts (1871-78), before resuming his law practice in Framingham.
References & notes
His military service from Heitman.1 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1880, and his Congressional biography. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture is from a Brady photograph at the Library of Congress.
He married Martha Ann Jackson (1819-1867) in October 1841 and they had 5 children; among them Rear Admiral Charles Jackson Train (1845-1906). He married again, Sarah Maria Cheney (1836-1914) in 1869, and they had a son, Arthur Cheney Train (1875-1945).
A big thank you to Chris Bryan, author of Cedar Mountain to Antietam: A Civil War Campaign History of the Union XII Corps, July – September 1862 (2022) for the nudge to look into Congressman Train.
Birth
10/18/1817; Framingham, MA
Death
07/29/1885; Conway, NH; burial in Edgell Grove Cemetery and Mausoleum, Framingham, MA
1 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, pg. 969 [AotW citation 28563]