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(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
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
Birth
11/07/1829; Saratoga, NY
Death
12/07/1892; Waikiki, HI; burial in O'ahu Cemetery, Honolulu, HI
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]