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Early life and education. Thomas was born at Newsom's Depot, Southampton County, Virginia, five miles (8 km) from the North Carolina border. [1] His father, John Thomas, of Welsh [2] descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas, a descendant of French Huguenot immigrants, had six children.
George H. Thomas (born July 31, 1816, Southampton county, Va., U.S.—died March 28, 1870, San Francisco) was a Union general in the American Civil War (1861–65), known as “the Rock of Chickamauga” after his unyielding defense in combat near that stream in northwestern Georgia in September 1863.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Early Life
- U.S. Military Academy Cadet
- U.S. Army Officer
- Marriage
- Frontier Service
- Injuries
- Civil War
- Reconstruction
- Political Rejections
- Death
George Henry Thomas was born on January 31, 1816, at Newsom’s Depot, Virginia. His parents, John Thomas and Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas were upper-class Southern planters who owned twenty-four slaves. Thomas’s father died in a farm accident in 1829, leaving Thomas’s maternal uncle, James Rochelle, to oversee Thomas’s education. In 1831, Thomas’s fami...
By 1835, Thomas was preparing for a career in law, when Congressman John Y. Mason, a friend of James Rochelle, offered Thomas an appointment to the United States Military Academy. Thomas accepted and enrolled at the academy in 1836. During his first year at West Point, Thomas was a roommate of William T. Sherman, who would be his commanding officer...
After graduating from West Point, officials brevetted Thomas as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army on July 1, 1840. The army deployed Thomas to Florida, where he fought in theSecond Seminole War (1835 to 1842) in Florida. In 1844, officials promoted Thomas to first lieutenant. He then served with distinction in the Mexican-American War (1846 to 1...
On November 17, 1852, Thomas married Frances Lucretia Kellogg, the daughter of a merchant from Troy, New York. The couple had no children and remained married for the rest of Thomas’s life.
One year after the marriage, officials promoted Thomas to captain on December 24, 1853. The couple remained at West Point until the spring of 1854 when the army transferred Thomas to Fort Yuma, California. On May 12, 1855, officials promoted Thomas to major and reassigned him to the 2nd U.S. Cavalry where he served for five years under future Confe...
On August 26, 1860, a Comanche arrow passed through the flesh on his chin before penetrating his chest during a skirmish near the Brazos River in Texas. In November, he received a one-year leave from the military. On his way home, Thomas fell from a train platform in Lynchburg, Virginia, severely injuring his back and leading him to consider leavin...
Union Officer
When the American Civil War erupted in 1861, Thomas remained in the United States Army rather than casting his lot with his home state when Virginia seceded (April 17, 1861). The decision was difficult, particularly because it caused him to become estranged from his family and friends in Virginia. He must have expected that his status as a Southerner in the Union Army might fuel suspicions about his loyalty or at least about his earnestness for waging war against the Confederacy. Despite any...
Army of the Ohio and Victory at the Battle of Mill Spring
Thomas received a combat position on December 2, 1861, commanding the 1st Division of the Army of the Ohio, under Major General Don Carlos Buell. On January 18, 1862, Thomas directed the first significant Union victory of the war at the Battle of Mill Spring, near Nancy, Kentucky.
Battle of Shiloh and Siege of Corinth
Thomas was present at the Battle of Shiloh when Buell’s army moved to reinforce Grant, but his division did not arrive until after the fighting ceased. When Major General Henry Halleck relieved Major General Ulysses Grant of his command of the Army of the Tennessee during the aftermath of the Battle of Shiloh, he placed Thomas in charge of four divisions from Grant’s army and one division from the Army of the Ohio. Thomas successfully led this temporary force at the Union victory at Corinth,...
After the war, Thomas commanded the Military Division of the Tennessee, which included Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida (Mississippi was added later added). During Reconstruction, he used his position to protect freedmen, to promote racial tolerance, and to combat the Ku Klux Klan.
In 1867, Thomas declined President Andrew Johnson’s offer to promote him to the rank of lieutenant general because he refused to get involved in Johnson’s politically motivated scheme to thwart Ulysses S. Grant’s presidential aspirations. A year later, the Tennessee State Convention nominated Thomas for President of the United States, but Thomas de...
On June 15, 1869, the army reassigned Thomas to command the Department of the Pacific and he moved to San Francisco, California. Less than a year later, Thomas died of a stroke on May 28, 1870, making him the first prominent Union general to die after the Civil War. Some of Thomas’ Virginia family members (including his sisters) refused to attend h...
- Harry Searles
May 29, 2018 · George H. Thomas was born on July 31, 1816, in Southampton County, Va. He graduated from the county academy and read law before attending the U.S. Military Academy (1836-1840). In Florida he won a brevet to first lieutenant during 2 years of action with the 3d Artillery against the Seminole Indians.
May 31, 2023 · Born in Southampton, Virginia, in 1816 to a wealthy family of enslavers, Thomas entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when he was 20 years old and became a career military officer.
Oct 8, 2017 · Born July 31, 1816, in Southampton County, Virginia, Thomas gained local fame as a boy when he rode through the county to warn neighbors of the Nat Turner-led slave uprising of 1831. This helped him gain appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated with distinction and became an instructor in artillery and cavalry.
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Nov 7, 2020 · George Henry Thomas was born July 31, 1816, at Newsom's Depot, VA. Growing up on a plantation, Thomas was one of many who violated the law and taught his family's enslaved people to read. Two years after his father's death in 1829, Thomas and his mother led his siblings to safety during the rebellion by enslaved people led by Nat Turner.
