Thomas, Samuel, 1840-1903

Samuel Russell Thomas was a Union officer during the Civil War and a Freedmen’s Bureau official in Mississippi during the Reconstruction era.

Born on April 27, 1840, in South Point, Ohio, Thomas worked for the Keystone Iron Company as a young man and initially studied mining. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, he volunteered for Union military service, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Twenty-seventh Ohio Infantry Regiment. He was repeatedly promoted, eventually reaching the rank of colonel and then the brevet (honorary) rank of general. Thomas participated in several battles in the western theater, including Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga.

At the end of the Civil War, Thomas initially remained in the army, serving as a staff officer under General Oliver O. Howard, who was commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandon Lands (or Freedmen’s Bureau). Thomas oversaw much of the bureau’s work in Mississippi during the first two years after the war. He mustered out of the army in early 1867 and returned to Ohio, where he found success in industrial development, including the manufacturing of pig iron, mining coal, and then constructing railroads. He served as an executive in several railroad companies during the late nineteenth century.

Thomas died on January 11, 1903. He was married to Ann Porter and had three children. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. (FindaGrave; Wikipedia)