George Carroll, Sergeant, Company K

From Slavery to the United States Army

George W. Carroll was born in Somerset County, Maryland, about 1827. His Army descriptive record gave his age as thirty-seven when he entered the service, his height as about five feet eleven and one-half inches, and his occupation as farmer. He was an enslaved man before the Civil War. Carroll later explained that he had been owned by the wife of Littleton Long, Sr., and had been hired out from place to place. He said that he took the surname Carroll from his father.

Littleton Long, Sr., of Princess Anne, Somerset County, filed a federal claim for compensation for Carroll's enlistment. The claim papers described Carroll as Long's slave for life and stated that Long had acquired his interest through marriage in July 1858. Long executed a deed of manumission and release of service on May 2, 1864. The federal Board of Claims awarded him $300. The documents are a striking reminder of the legal world Carroll was leaving behind: while he was becoming a United States soldier, the government was compensating the person who asserted ownership of him.

Enlistment at Camp Stanton

Carroll enlisted on January 4, 1864, in Somerset County for a three-year term and mustered into Company K, 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, at Benedict, Maryland, on January 16. His later pension testimony gives an unusually vivid account of the physical hardship of the regiment's winter organization at Camp Stanton. He remembered, “Benedict was the coldest place I ever lived.”

Carroll said that before enlistment he had been exceptionally strong and able to do nearly two men's work. He also recalled that Army surgeons had rejected him twice before finally accepting him. During the march from Benedict toward Baltimore, he developed severe pain in his right side, which he attributed to his equipment belt being strapped too tightly. He became sick enough to be taken off duty and treated while the regiment was in the Baltimore barracks.

Campaigning with the 19th USCT

In the spring of 1864 the 19th USCT joined the Army of the Potomac. Carroll served through the regiment's hard campaigning in Virginia, including the Overland Campaign and the operations around Petersburg. The regiment's authorized battle record included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Tolopotomy Creek, North Anna, Cold Harbor, the Siege of Petersburg, Cemetery Hill—the Battle of the Crater—Weldon Railroad, Poplar Grove Church, Hatcher's Run, and Richmond.

Carroll's pension testimony indicates that his health deteriorated during this service. He said he developed rheumatism during the winter of 1864 after exposure at Benedict. He remembered having measles, catching cold, and being treated in the barracks hospital. His aches and stiffness became so severe that at times he could not walk. He said the rheumatism continued intermittently during the Virginia campaigns and later became especially severe in Texas.

Sunstroke at the Battle of the Crater

Carroll identified July 30, 1864—the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg—as the beginning of another lifelong disability. He testified that immediately after the explosion of the mine, while the Union force was retreating, he suffered what he called sunstroke. He fainted and remained unconscious for a time. When he revived, he could not see. The immediate treatment, as he remembered it, consisted of cold water applied to his head.

He was off duty for about a week. Carroll later said that from that day forward he suffered pain or a burning sensation over his eyes, dizziness, headaches, and impaired vision, especially in spring and summer. Fellow soldier Frank K. Russell recalled Carroll as a “sickly man” during the war and remembered him suffering from dizziness and weakness. Another veteran, Hiram Sterling, remembered Carroll suffering from measles, rheumatism, and a complaint affecting his side.

Promotion and Leadership

Despite his recurring health problems, Carroll remained with Company K and advanced in rank. He was promoted from Private to Corporal by Special Orders No. 6, dated January 27, 1865. He was promoted again, to Sergeant, on July 1, 1865. His rise from an enslaved farm laborer to a noncommissioned officer in the United States Army within eighteen months is one of the most important features of his military record.

Carroll later summarized his own service simply: he had served as Private, Corporal, and Sergeant in Company K of the 19th USCT. The promotions show that his officers considered him capable of greater responsibility even after the exhausting 1864 campaigns.

Texas Service

After the Civil War ended, the 19th USCT was ordered to Texas rather than discharged. Carroll went with the regiment to the Rio Grande. Company K was among the companies ordered in February 1866 to Rancho Cortina for permanent camp duty. Carroll remembered his rheumatism becoming so severe in Texas that for about a month he could not walk and a doctor had to come to his tent.

The regiment remained on the border until January 1867. Carroll mustered out as a Sergeant at Brownsville, Texas, on January 15, 1867. His muster-out record shows that he had completed the long arc of service from the winter camp at Benedict through the Virginia battlefields and the postwar occupation of Texas.

Marriage and Life in Somerset County

Carroll returned to Somerset County, where he had lived before the war. His pension records identify his wife as Christiana Williams Carroll. The surviving testimony places their marriage in Somerset County in 1861, before his enlistment. Witnesses who had known the couple for decades testified that George and Christiana lived together continuously as husband and wife except during his Army service.

Carroll's 1898 response to the Bureau of Pensions stated that he and Christiana had no living children. By that time his post-office address was Marion, Somerset County. His own 1895 testimony said that, except for his years in the Army, he had always lived in the county of his birth.

The Long Physical Cost of Army Service

The pension file preserves Carroll's repeated effort to connect his later disabilities with his wartime service. He claimed continuing pain in his right side, rheumatism, headaches, dizziness, and impaired eyesight. In an 1891 affidavit he described suffering from rheumatic pains in his right side and back, severe pain extending from the pit of his stomach toward his spinal column, and a generally weakened condition that left him unable to perform manual labor.

His former comrades could not confirm every detail or every claimed cause, and some remembered only parts of his illnesses. That uncertainty is important. The pension record is strongest in showing that Carroll repeatedly complained of rheumatism, weakness, dizziness, head and eye trouble after the war, and that several men who had served with him remembered him being sick during military service. Carroll himself consistently traced the most serious head and vision problems to July 30, 1864, at Petersburg.

Death and Christiana Carroll's Pension Claim

George W. Carroll died in Somerset County on September 9, 1904. After his death, Christiana Carroll sought a widow's pension. The Bureau of Pensions conducted a detailed special examination in 1905, taking testimony from relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances to establish that George and Christiana had been legally married and had remained husband and wife until his death.

The investigation is valuable far beyond the pension question. It preserves the voices of people who had known the Carrolls before the Civil War and for decades afterward, helping connect the enslaved man of Somerset County, the Sergeant of Company K, and the aging veteran living near Marion into a single life story.

George Carroll's Place in the 19th USCT Story

George W. Carroll's record captures several central themes in the history of the 19th USCT. He entered the Army from slavery, endured the severe winter at Camp Stanton, marched and fought through the regiment's Virginia campaigns, survived the Battle of the Crater, rose twice in rank, served on the Rio Grande after the war, and returned to the Maryland county in which he had been enslaved.

His story also records the war's physical consequences. The soldier who said he could do nearly two men's work before enlistment spent his later years describing chronic pain, rheumatism, dizziness, headaches, and failing eyesight. Yet his military record shows persistence and advancement: Private George Carroll became Corporal George Carroll and finally Sergeant George Carroll. His surviving service and pension papers give us not merely a name on a roster, but the testimony of a man who remembered in old age exactly what freedom and military service had cost his body.

Sources

This profile is based primarily on George W. Carroll's compiled military service, slave-compensation, and pension records preserved at the U.S. National Archives, together with Robert K. Summers, Maryland's Black Civil War Soldiers: 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops.