DOB/DOD: 1840 * (Milford, CT) – January 25, 1867 (New Milford, CT); 27 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Married Sarah E. Kramer (1844-1935).
CHILDREN: One son, Oliver C. (1864-1888). One daughter, Carrie V. Marsh Kellogg (1867-1926).
ENLISTMENT: April 20, 1861, in New Milford, Connecticut.
DISCHARGE: August 2, 1865.
* The exact Date of Birth is unknown.
FAMILY: Born to Oliver C. (1811-1883) and Caroline Davis Marsh (1815-1880). One brother, Philip G. (1837-1922).
OTHER: Member of St. Peter’s Masonic Lodge #21 in New Milford. Wounded and imprisoned on August 7, 1862, at Gordonsville, Virginia.
MEDAL OF HONOR CITATION
AWARDED FOR ACTIONS DURING: Civil War
BRANCH OF SERVICE: Army
UNIT: Company H, 1st Connecticut Cavalry
DATE OF ISSUE AND PRESENTATION: January 23, 1865
AGE ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT: 24
CITATION:
The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Private Charles H. Marsh, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 31 July 1864, while serving with Company D, 1st Connecticut Cavalry, in action at Back Creek Valley, West Virginia, for capture of flag and its bearer.
Charles Marsh’s Medal of Honor from the archives of the New Milford Historical Society
From the Hartford Courant November 17, 1864
CAPTURE OF A BLACK FLAG
Summary of Late Captures In the Shenandoah Valley
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 – General Tyler has forwarded to the Adjutant General’s office the black flag captured from [Confederate General Jubal] Early’s command last August near North Mountain. He says the flag was in charge of two rebels and set up against a tree. One of the rebels went in search of water. C.H. Marsh, a detective who had been watching the flag from nightfall, determined to get it if possible and sprung upon the man left alone, secured him, took the flag from the pole, and brought it and the prisoner safely within our lines.
From The Danbury News-Times June 11, 1989. The clipping was found in the Congressional Medal of Honor Society archives. Used with permission.
NEW MILFORD — The year was 1862, and Union spy Charles Marsh was in a Virginia prison awaiting execution. Beside him lay another war prisoner, a man on his deathbed.
In the dark of night and with the help of the prison doctor, Marsh changed places with the dying man. The following day, “Marsh” was found dead in bed.
Friends who thought Marsh had been hanged at Aldie, Virginia, were shocked when he turned up in Baltimore a few months later, paroled under his assumed name.
Less than a year later, Marsh, a Union Corporal who often passed himself off as a Confederate soldier, was again captured. But the New Milford man was released to continue a story-book career that earned him a footnote in Civil War history.
For his reliable intelligence reports and the daring capture of a prized Confederate flag, Marsh was one of few soldiers to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Civil War.
“When I read what he did, it was unbelievable,” said Thomas Durning of North Haven, who is researching Medal of Honor recipients. Although thousands received the medal after the war, Durning said Marsh was one of about 150 who received the highest military honor during the war.
“Last year, During placed a monument containing the Medal of Honor insignia over Marsh’s grave in a Quaker cemetery near the intersection of Route 7 and Sullivan Road.
By the time Marsh died, the Quaker cemetery had become less a religious burying ground than a neighborhood cemetery, according to Joseph Lillis, the town historian. Lillis said Marsh lived on nearby Lanesville Road.
Durning said Marsh’s reports on Confederate troop movements made their way to top commanders in Washington. Marsh’s inclusion of names of the commanders of the Confederate units was a bonus for Union generals because it gave them a better idea of what to expect from their opponents, Durning said.
The highlight of Marsh’s career came when he spotted a Confederate flag in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, in 1864. Marsh waited nearby until one of the guarding the flag left for a drink of water. He then overpowered the remaining guard and brought both the guard and the flag back through Confederate lines.
A company flag was an important signal because it was a rallying point for troops.
On another foray, Marsh returned with several deserting rebels.
Marsh eluded the enemy for several years but contracted tuberculosis during the war and died at the age of 27 in 1867. He left a widow, Sara, and three children, Oliver, Carrie, and Sara.
Sara remained in New Milford until she died in 1935.
Durning found the references to Marsh’s exploits in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion.
In 1977, the town dedicated a bridge at Lover’s Leap in Marsh’s memory after local historian Norman Flayderman searched through records to find a local hero.
Marsh’s grandson’s widow, Dorothy Kellogg, spoke at the Marsh Bridge dedication in 1977. Kellogg said Sara had felt that the town had forgotten her husband’s exploits and had hoped for recognition for him.
Durning did his research as part of his crusade to identify and honor the state’s Medal of Honor winners. He began the task when he was asked to find the grave sites of Civil War Medal of Honor winners but expanded it when he found that medal winners from all wars were interred in poorly marked graves.
Durning, in fact, found the grave of Ridgefield Brigadier General Wilbur Wilder only by chance. After searching the graveyard several times, Durning happened to notice Wilder’s broken marker under a bush.
From The Connecticut Post May 30, 2010
CIVIL WAR MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER HAD TIES TO MILFORD
MILFORD — A second U.S. Medal of Honor winner once called Milford home, but apparently not for long.
Charles H. Marsh, born here in 1840, won the highest U.S. military honor for “capturing a Confederate flag and its bearer” on July 31, 1864, at Back Creek Valley, Virginia.
But Marsh, who after the Civil War moved to Pawling, N.Y., and is buried in New Milford, had been at several key battles with the famed 1st Connecticut Calvary, Company D, including the pivotal confrontation at Spotsylvania.
The only other Milford resident known to have received the Medal of Honor, Gen. William Baird, also served in the Civil War but won his decoration for bravery a decade later fighting on the Great Plains against the Nez Perce Indians and their leader, Chief Joseph.
Former Mayor Joel Baldwin, who serves on the Milford Hall of Fame Committee, provided the research on Marsh to the committee last week. The Hall of Fame annually inducts a Milford native or resident from each of the five centuries of the community’s existence.
Marsh, whose time as a city resident as well as his life were both brief, could be considered for future induction, organizers said.
He won the medal, the highest military honor that the country bestows, in a raid against Confederate Gen. Jubal Early’s troops in a contested section of western Virginia. During the war, that part of the state, including Harper’s Ferry, joined the Union as West Virginia.
However brave Marsh may have been that day, his letters pleading to be exchanged after he was taken prisoner are also part of his war record. A Dec. 1, 1862, letter to James Seddon, the secretary of war for the Confederacy, argues that when he was captured that October near Haymarket, he was within an area controlled by federal troops.
“Am I not then a prisoner of war? And if so, why should I not be exchanged? I am here without friends or money,” Marsh wrote from prison. “True, I am, but a poor private, and that must be the reason I am overlooked. But I am confined with all classes of criminals, and I respectfully solicit an inquiry into my case.”
Seddon asked the superintendent of Castle Thunder prison to investigate and was told that Marsh was being held as a spy. Another letter, taken from Marsh, “was deemed of itself sufficient to establish a grave suspicion and to warrant his detention,” replied George Alexander, the provost marshal of the prison.
Nonetheless, Marsh was part of a group of Union soldiers exchanged for Confederate POWs later that year. In light of his heroism on the battlefield two years later, the Southerners may have regretted the decision to let him go.
Marsh was living in New Milford when he enlisted in the Connecticut Cavalry, which also fought at Cold Harbor and Port Republic. The unit escorted Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to receive Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, according to the website http://www.civil-war-history.com/, and suffered a 56 percent casualty rate.
Marsh died in Pawling on January 25, 1867, at age 27, from “disease contracted in the war,” according to his entry in the Official Records and Correspondence of the War of Rebellion.
City Historian Richard Platt said that the town of New Milford, in the northwestern section of the state, was founded by people from Milford and that there was considerable movement between the two communities in the 19th century.
Honored on the New Milford Civil War Memorial, New Milford Town Green, 25 Main Street, New Milford, Connecticut.
Buried in the Quaker Burying Grounds, 300 Danbury Road, New Milford, Connecticut. Photos by Jeff DeWitt.
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