Hamilton Frisby (b. circa 1839 - d. 1916)
MSA SC 3520-5775
USCT Soldier, Kent County, Maryland

Biography:

Note: These are excerpts from the biographies on Hamilton Frisby's life. Two extensive biographies written by Washington College students are accessible on this page. Please consult the attached essays for a more complete and descriptive case study.

    Hamilton Frisby’s speculated birth date is in January 1839, in the small farming community of Chesterville, Maryland.¹ Frisby was a dowry slave, meaning that he had been passed from Catherine Davis’s maiden family and through her marriage to her husband, James Davis.² The Davis family lived in Chesterville, Maryland, James working as a farmer who likely grew wheat, which was the dominant crop on the Eastern Shore as of the late 18th century, when it proved more lucrative and depleted the soil less than tobacco.³ Hamilton’s master James Davis agreed to part with his servant of twelve years and accept President Lincoln’s program of compensated emancipation and took a three hundred dollar bounty in exchange for his slave’s service in the army.⁴

    Hamilton Frisby enlisted as a private in Company A of the 9th United States Colored Troops on January 17, 1864, when he was approximately 22 years old.⁵ Frisby’s commanding officer in the 9th USCT was Colonel Thomas Bayley.⁶ Frisby’s initial recruitment took place in Camp Stanton, a post within Benedict, Maryland in Charles County on the Western Shore.⁷ Black soldiers for the state came into service until General Order 329, passed by Congress on October 3, 1863 to legalize the enlistment of African American slaves with consenting owners, runaway slaves, and free blacks within the five border states.⁸ The regiment spent three months at Camp Stanton in order to engage in regimental organization and basic drilling maneuvers before leaving in March 1864 to be stationed in Hilton Head and Beauford, South Carolina.⁹

    The 9th saw its first real combat after moving from South Carolina to Virginia during the siege of Petersburg. Seven members of the 9th USCT died during the failed assault upon Fort Gilmer, with seventy-nine wounded and eighteen additional missing.¹⁰ For Private Frisby his only parting gift from Fort Gilmer would the rebel minnie ball that had passed through his leg during the charge. The bullet entered on the upper portion of his calf, near the tibia, and left no visible exit wound, suggesting that it remained inside his body.¹¹ While his regiment was consolidating and reinforcing their hard won fortifications on New Market Heights, Hamilton would spend the next three months in a military hospital in Point of Rocks, Virginia, recuperating from a wound that would never fully heal.¹² Hamilton Frisby returned to duty in the December of 1864. However, he was again absent from duty from July 2nd through the August of 1865.¹³ During this time Frisby complained of general symptoms of fatigue.¹⁴ Frisby returned to duty in August 1865 and was promoted to the rank of corporal that November. This rank, though noncommissioned, was only shared between Frisby and eleven other African American men in Company A of the 9th USCT.¹⁵ After the war, the 9th regiment performed garrison duty in Texas for nearly eighteen months before being discharged and mustered out on November 10, 1866.¹⁶   

    Hamilton Frisby left the army in Baltimore, Maryland and returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland in late 1866. He remained in Kent County, which had the highest proportion of African Americans out of any other county in Maryland by 1870.¹⁷ In June of 1868, Hamilton for the first time in his life became a home owner. Having received the second half of his one hundred dollar bounty at the end of his enlistment and of course three years of army wages Hamilton had enough to afford a three hundred dollar lot with a house on Scotts Point just outside of Chestertown.¹⁸ The following month after purchasing the house he married Sarah Maria Boyer, a local woman just two years his junior.¹⁹ By February 27^th, 1869, Frisby had the funds to buy an adjoining parcel of land for an additional $80, this time from Percy and Ann Elizabeth Dixon. This smaller parcel, encompassing four hundred and sixty-nine square feet, was also located on Scott’s Point.²⁰ Hamilton and Sarah Frisby became estranged from one another by 1880, Sarah taking up residence with another man in Kent County despite her marriage to Hamilton.²¹ 

    In May 1884, Frisby first filed for an invalid pension.²² The field hospital eventually produced the required former document with difficulty, as a previous note from the Surgeon General’s Office stated that, “the records of wounded pertaining to the battle at Fort Gilmer…furnish no information, and records on file in this office…bear no additional evidence in this case.”²³ The latter requirement, a statement from a commissioned officer who could validate Frisby’s being wounded at Fort Gilmer, proved more problematic to procure. Thus, Frisby turned to his fellow USCT soldiers for assistance. Thomas Carmichael, a commissary (non-commissioned) sergeant in the 9th USCT and John W. Anderson, a private in Company F of the 7th USCT (the same Anderson who served as the Post Commander at Fort Sumner for 1883-1887) wrote a joint letter for the Justice of the Peace that stated their involvement in Fort Gilmer and the fact that each bore witness to Frisby’s being shot.²⁴ Frisby was chosen to be a representative of the Charles Summer Post, No. 25, Chestertown’s outpost of the national organization, the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.). Frisby’s appointment as a representative, under Post Commander John W. Anderson, documents his active participation and position of authority within the community of Civil War veterans in Chestertown.²⁵

    Frisby was forced to mortgage his property and rent a home on Calvert Street during the last years of his life.²⁶ The last days of Hamilton Frisby would be spent at 428 Calvert Street in Chestertown until May 23, 1916 when he succumbed to what appeared to be arterial sclerosis and congestion, passing away at the age of 73.²⁷ He is buried in the M.E. Church Cemetery in Chestertown.²⁸ To his brother, Samuel, and his niece, Fanny Blake, he left fifty dollars to each and to his former wife Sarah who at the time was going by the name Sarah Rigby, Hamilton found it in his heart and wallet to leave her ten dollars.²⁹ Frisby’s trajectory from enslavement, to soldier, and finally Kent County resident is a representative case in the population of black veterans in the Reconstruction era working to bridge the gap between emancipation and citizenship.

For extended biographies written and shared by Washington College students enrolled in the course "Chestertown's America" HIST 394, Spring 2013, taught by Adam Goodheart, please follow these links:

    "A Shooting Case: The Biography of Hamilton Frisby, Corporal in the 9th USCT" by Sydney Sznajder

    "Corporal Hamilton Frisby, Company A, 9th USCT, 1887 Representative Sumner Post No. 25, G.A.R., Chestertown, MD" by Mike Canavan

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