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As a result of this website I have made acquaintance with Randy Fletcher of Oregon. Randy has done extensive research on one of Allegany County's Civil War Boys. Randy recently wrote an article about General Thorpe of the Town of Granger. Permission is granted to link to this story which appears in the Oregon Magazine. Below is an introduction, followed by the link. Ron Taylor |
The Minister and The General
Former Civil War Foes Meet Again in Turn of the Century Corvallis
By Randy Fletcher
The general passed away on a summer’s day in Corvallis, Oregon in 1915. The old soldier’s end had come some fifty years and three thousand miles from where his gallantry had earned honor and promotion on the fields of the American Civil War. A local minister with whom the general was well acquainted would deliver his eulogy. Both the general and the minister were known and respected residents of Corvallis, but the two men shared a common bond from a Virginia battlefield a half century earlier: The minister had once been a prisoner of the general.
The General was Thomas Jones Thorp, the once handsome and dashing cavalry commander of the 1st New York Dragoons. The minister was the distinguished Rev. Dr. J.R.N. Bell of the Corvallis Presbyterian Church, Regent of Oregon Agricultural College, and former Confederate soldier.
Corvallis – We have discovered that an army General who led Union troops in the Civil War is buried in an unmarked grave at Crystal Lake Masonic Cemetery in Corvallis. Thomas J. Thorp was the commander of the 1st New York Dragoons. He saw action at the Battle of the Wilderness and was wounded at Fair Oaks. At the Battle of Trevellian Station in June of 1864 Col. Thorp was captured by Confederate forces and sent to a P.O.W. camp in Macon, Georgia. Freed before the end of the war, he was promoted to Brevet Brigadier General of U.S. Volunteers. He was 28 years old at that time.
After the Civil War, like so many other combat veterans, Thorp headed West. Leaving his native New York he owned a farm in Wexford, Michigan for a number of years but by the turn of the Twentieth Century, Thorp and his wife Mandana were living in Corvallis. When Thorp died in 1915, his funeral was presided over by Rev. JRN Bell, a former Confederate soldier who had become friends with the old general. Today, no one knows why Thorp’s grave has gone unmarked for ninety-three years but, thanks to the Col. Baker Camp and volunteers, Judy from Benton County Parks and Delina from Findagrave.com, he will receive a proper military headstone from the Veterans Administration before this Memorial Day.