Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Immigrant, Bugler, Prisoner, Deserter: Frank Brinkman, 4th Ky. Cavalry (USA)

        As I have studied Campbell County men who served in the Civil War, I have learned quite a bit, including about battles that I had never seen much about previously. One such contest was the First Battle of Murfreesboro, a July 13, 1862, birthday victory for then-Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest and his Confederate troops, described in that link as “the first significant operation behind Federal lines in the western theater,” a success that “catapulted Forrest to great renown and a promotion to brigadier general,” while interrupting Union operations against Chattanooga and communication in middle Tennessee.

The Confederate triumph at this lightly guarded city, “a strategic supply depot on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad,” for the Federals, may have also enabled General Braxton Bragg to take the time to concentrate his band of Rebels for a campaign into Kentucky which ended at the Battle of Perryville three months later.

I found out about this contest while exploring the life of Frank Brinkman, a bugler in the Union army and a postwar resident of Campbell County. 

Frank was born on November 21, 1840, in Bremen, Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1859. He became one of numerous German natives who fought for the Federal government, including several I have uncovered in my own research. 

When the Civil War began two years after his arrival, he enlisted in company A of the 4th Kentucky Cavalry on September 25, 1861, in Louisville, mustering into the regiment as a bugler in December. He stood 5 feet 8 inches tall, and had a fair complexion, light hair, and blue eyes.   

The 4th Kentucky Cavalry included “the second largest contingent of Germans in a Kentucky regiment.  Perhaps this shared heritage was the reason he joined this particular unit.1

 Frank’s regiment remained in the western theater of the war after its organization. It spent much of its time in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, seeing action in various battles and campaigns including the Tullahoma Campaign in mid-1863, the Battle of Chickamauga in September of that year, and the Atlanta Campaign throughout the spring and summer of 1864.

During the inglorious action at Murfreesboro, Frank became one of the about 800 to 1,200 Union soldiers captured by Forrest’s men. The victors quickly paroled their captured enemies, obligating them not to fight again until an official exchange between the two armies went into effect. Frank spent time at Camp Chase in Ohio awaiting exchange, but when he was exchanged on January 20, 1863, he chose to desert the army instead of returning to his unit.2

Good fortune was on his side, though, as he was able to remain away from the army for a few months until Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation of amnesty in early 1863, allowing soldiers who were absent without leave to return to their unit with no punishment except the loss of pay for their time away. Frank took advantage of this opportunity and returned to the regiment on April 15.

The rest of his military days were less eventful. In early 1864, he re-enlisted in the unit as a Veteran Volunteer and received promotion to Chief Bugler of the entire regiment around the same time.

He served out his remaining term and mustered out of the army on August 21, 1865, in Macon, Georgia. 


   Kentucky Post June 23, 1916

In his postwar years, he lived in Newport by 1870, working as a steamboat cook. He married Elizabeth Moeller in 1876, and the couple had at least three children before she passed away in 1901. He also worked as a bridge contractor in these decades.

Frank died of diabetes on June 21, 1916, at home on Retreat Street in Southgate. His obituary described him as an “Ohio River sailor and commander, and for many years collector on the Central Bridge” who had “plied the Ohio River for more than a half century,” perhaps including some of the hyperbole that obituaries of the time often employed. It mentioned his service in the war, claiming he had lived through “four years and 31 days of actual war experience,” probably another slight exaggeration, and had been an “active member” of the William Nelson Post of the Grand Army of the Republic ever since that post’s formation. 3,4

The G.A.R. post conducted his funeral at his home, and the funeral procession carried his body to its final resting place in the Union soldiers’ section at Evergreen Cemetery, just a few hundred yards from his home.

 


From findagrave memorial # 22198050 

1Reinhart, Joseph R. A History of the 6th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, U.S. The Boys who Feared no Noise. Beargrass Press 2000. Accessed via https://www.usgenwebsites.org/KYCampbell/germanscivilwar.htm, July 9, 2023.  
2https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/battle-of-murfreesboro/, Accessed August 1, 2024
3Kentucky Post, June 21, 1916
4Kentucky Post, June 23, 1916

 

                                 

 

             

 

 

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