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H. Burnham
(1814 - 1864)
Home State: Maine
Command Billet: Commanding Regiment
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 6th Maine Infantry
Before Antietam
He had formed and led a militia company as Captain in the Aroostook War of 1839,
and, by 1860, was a lumberman and mill owner, Militia Colonel, and had been elected County Commissioner.1
He was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the 6th Maine Infantry on 15 July 1861, and Colonel on 12 December that year.2 He commanded the Regiment through the Peninsula Campaign.
On the Campaign
He commanded the 6th at Crampton's Gap on 14 September, and at Antietam on the 17th, though they were not engaged there.
The rest of the War
He led his Regiment through the campaigns of the AoP including Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and to the Wilderness. He was appointed Brigadier General in April 1864, but killed in action at Chapin's Farm, near Richmond, Virginia, 29 September 1864.3
References & notes
Photograph above from Uuriguen.4
More on the Web
His gravesite is pictured online by Find-a-grave. His birth year, above, is estimated from an inscription that he died "aged 50 years" - described by a descendent, from that stone.
Birth
1814; Narraguagus, ME
Death
09/29/1864; Chapin's Farm, VA; burial in Pine Grove Cemetery, Cherryfield, ME
1 From Mundy quoted in a post on RootsWeb in 1999.
Mundy, James H., No Rich Men's Sons: The Sixth Maine Volunteer Infantry, Cape Elizabeth (Me.): Harp Publications, 1994, pg. 17 [AotW citation 502]
2 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, pg. 265 [AotW citation 503]
3 Fiske, John, and James Grant Wilson, editors, Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, 6 vols., New York City: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889 [AotW citation 504]
4 Uriguen, Mikel, Photo Gallery (Generals and Brevet Generals), Generals of the Civil War, Published c. 1998, first accessed 01 January 1998, <http://www.generalsandbrevets.com/>, Source page: /ngb/burnham.htm [AotW citation 505]