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Federal (USV)

Lieutenant Colonel

Jonathan Austin

(1829 - 1892)

Home State: New York

Command Billet: Commanding Regiment

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 78th New York Infantry

Before Antietam

At age 32, he enrolled 11 February 1862, and mustered as Captain, Company F, 78th New York Infantry on 18 March 1862. He had raised much of the Regiment. He was appointed Lieutenant Colonel to date from 18 April 1862. Colonel Ullman was captured in action (probably at Cedar Mountain in August 1862), leaving Lieutenant Colonel Austin in actual command.

On the Campaign

He commanded the regiment in Maryland and relieved Colonel Goodrich in command of the brigade on 17 September 1862 after Goodrich was killed in action. Captain Stagg took over the regiment.

The rest of the War

He resigned his commission in January 1863.

After the War

He went to Hawaii in 1877 - following his brothers, one of whom was Judge Samuel L. Austin, who had arrived on a whaler in 1849 and stayed; a sugar plantation owner since 1863 (Austins were also American missionaries in Hawaii in the 1840's or earlier). Jonathan had a law office in Honolulu and owned and managed his own sugar plantation called Paukaa. He was Hawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Secretary of War from 1887-1890, Minister of Interior in 1888, and Commissioner of Patents from 1884 until his his death. In 1891 he was a founding partner and Treasurer of the Hawaiian Electric Company. He was a central figure in the movement hoping to secure Hawaii for the United States, which was largely successful within a few months of his death in 1892.

References & notes

Service dates from Phisterer1, with bio details from his obituary in the (Honolulu) Friend in January 1893. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His name is sometimes seen in Hawaiian references as Jona Austin.

Birth

11/07/1829; Saratoga, NY

Death

12/07/1892; Waikiki, HI; burial in O'ahu Cemetery, Honolulu, HI

Notes

1   Phisterer, Frederick, New York in the War of the Rebellion, 6 volumes, Albany: J. B. Lyon Company, 1909-12, Vol. 4, pg. 2834  [AotW citation 15424]