Category Archives: Civil War

James Longstreet

For those who don’t know, the Confederate general James Longstreet was a descendant of Alexander Magruder. His descent as I know it is (1) Alexander Magruder + Elizabeth [maiden name unproved, possibly Hawkins] > (2) Alexander Magruder (II) + 2nd wife Susannah Busey > (3) Alexander Magruder (III) + 2nd wife Elizabeth Howard > (4) Alexander Howard Magruder + Jane Truman > (5) Nancy Anne Magruder + Thomas Marshall Dent > (6) Mary Ann Dent + James Longstreet > (7) James Peter Longstreet.

(If you’re wondering about all those 2nd wives…yes, maternal mortality was high in Colonial Maryland.)

When the Civil War started, James Longstreet was a professional soldier with twenty years service. An 1842 graduate of West Point, he fought in the U.S.-Mexico War and in campaigns to displace indigenous people in the western territories. Having been raised in Georgia among states-rights advocates, at the outbreak of the war he immediately resigned his commission and offered his services to the Confederacy.

Robert E. Lee called Longstreet his “Old War Horse” and “the staff in my right hand,” but promoters of the Lost Cause narrative vilified him after the war for accepting command of a bi-racial state militia in Louisiana under the Grant administration and embracing the Republican agenda for Radical Reconstruction.

Before that, however, Longstreet had already made two mistakes that harmed his reputation in the South: 1) he argued with Lee at Gettysburg, and 2) he was right. The frontal assault known as Pickett’s Charge was a disaster for the Confederacy, and those who revere Lee would rather blame Longstreet for foreseeing it than Lee for ordering it. In fact, Longstreet was skeptical about Lee’s second invasion of the North in general, and right about that too.

I’m posting because you might be interested in a new biography that examines Longstreet’s life in all these contexts, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South by Elizabeth Varon (Simon & Schuster, 2023).

If that’s too much reading, there’s a good bio sketch at The American Battlefield Trust, or have a look at Kevin M. Levine “James Longstreet, the Lost Cause, and the Original Cancel Culture,” from his online newsletter, Civil War Memory.

William Thomas Magruder, again

Since first posting about William T. Magruder (my great-great-grandfather’s first cousin) I have gone far, far down the rabbit hole, and (with the help of a few colleagues and collaborators) have been pulling together a narrative of his life. There are errors in my original post–not my own errors, except in the sense that I took sources at face value and now recognize the false assumptions they contain. Let it be a lesson in the basics of research! Find every possible source, compare them, and slowly sift the wheat from the chaff.

William did graduate from the military academy at West Point (in 1850, 11th in a class of 44), and he did change sides during the Civil War. As a U.S. Cavalry captain he fought in the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, but not at First Bull Run/First Manassas in 1861, as I said in my previous post.

His letter of resignation from the U.S. Army was written on 11 September 1862 and his resignation became official on October 1st. By October 27 he was in Richmond, offering his services to the Confederacy. He died the following July in the Pickett-Pettigrew charge at Gettysburg. William was not an officer in the 26th North Carolina, as claimed by the National Park Service site I previously linked to, but, rather, a staff officer for Brigadier General Joe Davis, nephew of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy.

He was also a husband and the father of a wee boy. Despite his short life, William T. Magruder has many descendants.

In an unexpected convergence, I have also found William T. Magruder nearly on my doorstep.

From 1851 until 1858 William was a dragoon officer on the frontier, though rarely “Indian fighting,” as some summaries of his career may claim. As of 1853 he had taken part in just one actual fight, a skirmish with the Chippewa near his post at Ft. Snelling, Minnesota, in which he is said to have killed a man. In 1854 he was transferred to Ft. Union, New Mexico Territory, where he served on the regimental staff. In March and April of 1855 he took part in two expeditions against the Muache Utes and Jicarilla Apaches right here in southern Colorado (then New Mexico Territory), with some events not more than a few miles from my cabin in the Wet Mountain Valley.

What I don’t yet have is insight into William’s character, personality, or motivations. If you are a descendant or have any connection to his family, I would love to hear from you. According to sources I have seen, there is a William T. Magruder archive preserved in the family. As of 2015 it seems to have been in the possession of Sam Magruder.

Here is a little of what the internet tells me about his family.

William married Mary Clayton Hamilton in 1860, in Baltimore. Their only child, also William Thomas Magruder (1861-1935), was raised by Mary & her second husband, William F. Lewis, an Episcopal minister in Catskill, NY. Educated as an engineer, William T. Maguder (II) ended his career as chair of the Mechanical Engineering department at the Ohio State University. He married Ellen Fall Malone, of Nashville. Their children were:

  • William Thomas Magruder Jr. (Dec 1892-Jan 1943) (I know, he’s the third one, but apparently he was called Jr.) who married Eliza Warren (1893-1989). Their children were Anne Warren Magruder (unmarried); William Thomas Magruder III, who married Sammie Polson; Samuel Warren Magruder, who married Carolyn Warner Sterry; Ellen M. Magruder, who married Liston Nicholson, and later (apparently widowed) lived in Tucson, AZ.
  • Thomas Malone Magruder (Nov 1896-1948) an engineer, who married (1) Ellen Dunn Trabue. Their son Thomas Malone Magruder Jr. was born April 1930 & Ellen died a month later. Thomas Sr. then married (2) Elizabeth Mccarroll.
  • Thomas Malone Magruder Jr. (1930-2009) was an Episcopal minister and married Carol Ann Schnitzer. He died in Nevada.
  • I have names of grandchildren & great-grandchildren. Other family names include Cornes, Farnsworth, and Wildman.

If this is your family, I’d be grateful if you would write to me via the Contact tab at the top of every page on this site.