Alvin N. Bugbee, Captain, Company A

The Regiment’s Pioneer Officer

Colonel Henry Goddard Thomas quickly found a special use for Bugbee. Lieutenant John S. Patterson, who later said that he knew Bugbee perhaps better than any other man in the regiment, remembered him as a large, powerful, athletic man and a skilled woodsman. Thomas placed him in charge of the regiment’s pioneers.

A Civil War infantry regiment’s pioneers performed demanding practical work essential to keeping an army moving and functioning. They cleared roads, built and repaired bridges, erected quarters and other structures, and performed labor requiring both strength and practical skill. Patterson recalled that Bugbee’s men constructed quarters, mess houses and stables for the regiment. An order dated September 5, 1864, formally placed Bugbee in command of a brigade Pioneer Corps consisting of one lieutenant, two sergeants, four corporals and thirty-four privates.

The work was especially hard on a man already carrying a serious leg wound. Pension testimony later described Bugbee as frequently working in water with the pioneers and suffering increasing stiffness, lameness and rheumatism. Yet there is no indication that he sought easier duty. Captain James H. Rickard remembered him as a courageous officer who never shirked laborious, hazardous or dangerous service.

The Battle of the Crater

Bugbee’s most remarkable episode came during the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, Virginia, on July 30, 1864. The 19th U.S. Colored Troops was one of the Black regiments sent into the enormous crater and the surrounding Confederate works after Union troops exploded a mine beneath the enemy line. The assault became one of the bloodiest and most chaotic actions in the regiment’s history.

During the fighting Bugbee suffered a severe injury to his right shoulder, apparently when struck by a fragment or the force of an exploding shell. Fellow officer William F. Tucker later recalled that after the mine explosion Bugbee was struck on the shoulder while they were sitting together on a log. Bugbee did not go to a hospital.

What he did instead became part of the regiment’s memory. Patterson testified that, although suffering from the shoulder injury, Bugbee slung canteens of water over the wounded shoulder and went out under heavy enemy fire to aid wounded men lying on the battlefield. The act is particularly striking because Bugbee himself was already disabled by the old gunshot wound in his thigh.

Patterson’s later description of Bugbee went beyond conventional praise of a fellow officer. He called him a modest and retiring man and remembered him as the bravest, most unselfish and uncompromisingly honest man known to the officers who served with him. Rickard similarly described him as brave and courageous and unwilling to avoid the regiment’s most difficult and dangerous work.

Promotion and Continued Service

Only a little more than two weeks after the Crater, Bugbee was promoted from second lieutenant to first lieutenant, effective August 16, 1864. His muster records show the administrative complexity of his service: he was reassigned among companies as vacancies and promotions occurred, while continuing to perform special and detached duties for the regiment and brigade.

By the autumn of 1864 he was serving with the brigade Pioneer Corps. Later records place him on detached duty as acting assistant quartermaster on brigade staff. These assignments suggest that his superiors valued not only his physical courage but also his reliability and practical ability.

Bugbee continued with the 19th through the closing campaigns in Virginia. His service extended beyond the surrender of the principal Confederate armies. Like the other men of the regiment, he went to Texas in 1865 as part of the postwar occupation force. Former comrades remembered that the long service, exposure and physical labor aggravated his old wounds and rheumatic complaints.

Texas and Muster Out

The 19th U.S. Colored Troops remained in Texas until early 1867. Bugbee was still serving as a first lieutenant when the regiment was mustered out at Brownsville on January 15, 1867. His military record noted that he had originally joined the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteers in June 1861, served as a private until November 25, 1863, received his commission in the 19th, and continued in service through the regiment’s final muster.

His wartime record received an additional distinction after the fighting was over. By General Order No. 67 of July 16, 1867, Bugbee was appointed brevet captain in the United States Volunteers for “meritorious services and bravery in action,” with rank dating from March 13, 1865. A brevet did not necessarily bring the pay or permanent command of the higher grade, but it was an official recognition of distinguished service.

The War Followed Him Home

Bugbee’s wounds never truly left him. The bullet wound in his right thigh remained painful and disabling. In later life he suffered increasing stiffness and lameness, rheumatism, and eventually heart disease. Former comrades repeatedly testified that these problems had been visible during the war and had worsened under the hardships of campaigning.

One of the most vivid recollections came from Rickard. When he encountered Bugbee again at the Grand Army of the Republic encampment in Columbus, Ohio, in 1888, he recognized his former comrade by his limping gait. Patterson likewise remembered Bugbee as stiff and lame during service in Virginia and Texas and later recalled seeing him at the 1892 G.A.R. encampment in Washington.

The pension evidence also preserves something of Bugbee’s civilian life. By the 1890s he was living in Templeton, Massachusetts, and described himself as a farmer. He stated that he could no longer perform the heavy labor necessary to support himself as he once had. Medical examinations documented a puckered scar on the right thigh, contraction and stiffness of the leg, painful motion, rheumatic symptoms and cardiac disease.

Family and Later Life

Genealogical evidence identifies Bugbee’s wife as Lucy Kendall Davis, whom he married in November 1867. Their children included Alvin, Newton Kendall, Lucy and Benjamin Harrison Bugbee. The family later had connections with Trenton, New Jersey.

Bugbee eventually lived at 119 Centre Street in Trenton. His New Jersey death certificate identifies him as Alvin Newton Bugbee, a surveyor, married, and 73 years and 11 months old. He died at his home on December 22, 1903. The certificate attributed his death to kidney and heart disease and recorded his burial in Riverview Cemetery in Trenton.

Remembered by His Comrades

Military records can document dates, ranks, assignments and wounds, but Bugbee’s pension file provides something rarer: the judgment of the men who knew him. Their testimony gives him a personality. He was physically powerful but permanently lame; practical and skilled in the woods; modest and retiring; trusted with difficult work; and willing to expose himself to danger for others.

The episode at the Crater best captures that character. Wounded in the shoulder amid a disastrous battle, Bugbee did not leave the field for treatment. Instead, according to Patterson, he loaded his injured shoulder with canteens and went back under Confederate fire to bring water to wounded soldiers. For an officer of the 19th U.S. Colored Troops, many of whose Black enlisted men faced death or re-enslavement if captured, the act was more than personal bravery. It was an officer deliberately sharing the danger of the men he commanded.

Decades afterward, Patterson’s memory of Bugbee remained unusually warm: the officers had taken particular notice of him, he said, because of his bravery, unselfishness and honesty. That testimony, combined with Bugbee’s official brevet for meritorious service and bravery in action, leaves a portrait of an officer whose service was respected both by the Army and by the men who knew him best.

Sources

Compiled Military Service and pension records of Alvin N. Bugbee, National Archives and Records Administration, supplied by Robert K. Summers.

Robert K. Summers, Maryland’s Black Civil War Soldiers, biographical entry for Alvin Bugbee.

James H. Rickard, pension affidavit concerning Alvin N. Bugbee, March 5, 1894; and John S. Patterson deposition, January 9, 1900, in Bugbee pension records.

General Orders and special orders reproduced in Bugbee’s National Archives file, including his appointment as brevet captain for meritorious services and bravery in action.

New Jersey Certificate of Death for Alvin Newton Bugbee, December 22, 1903, reproduced in his pension file.

Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin Name Index, Alvin N. Bugbee; reference to David A. Langkau, Civil War Veterans of Winnebago County, Wisconsin (1993), p. 121.

Patten genealogy, family entry for Lucy Kendall Davis and Alvin N. Bugbee, used for family information.