James Moulton, Private, Company A
James Moulton, Private, Company A
A Baltimore Man with Two Names
James Moulton left an unusually valuable record of his service in the 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. Army records identify him as James Moulton, the name under which he enlisted and served. For most of his long postwar life in Baltimore, however, he was known as James Davis. In a detailed 1921 pension examination he explained that his mother, Rachel Moulton, had children by two different fathers and that the family used both the Davis and Moulton names. He considered Moulton his proper name, but said that Davis had become the name by which most people knew him after the war.
His exact age is less certain than his identity. His military record gave his age as twenty-one when he enlisted, while in 1921 he said he had been about twenty and believed he was born October 12, 1843. He consistently said that he was born in Baltimore. He also recalled that his mother had earlier lived on the West River in Anne Arundel County before moving to Baltimore.
Enlistment and Camp Stanton
Moulton enlisted on December 9, 1863 and mustered into Company A of the 19th USCT at Camp Stanton, Maryland, on December 25. The military record summarized in Maryland’s Black Civil War Soldiers places his enlistment in Calvert County. In his pension testimony, Moulton remembered enlisting at Benedict in Charles County while he was working nearby. The difference is worth preserving rather than forcing into a single version: the contemporary Army record and the veteran’s memory, recorded nearly six decades later, describe the same period from different vantage points.
He became ill almost immediately after reaching Camp Stanton and spent several days in the camp hospital. His later testimony also provides a useful glimpse of the regiment’s early recruiting period. He remembered the 19th remaining at Benedict until it was filled and then assisting in recruiting men for the 30th and 39th U.S. Colored Troops.
From Maryland to the Petersburg Front
Moulton’s 1921 deposition is especially important because it preserves, in the words of an enlisted Black veteran, a compact history of the 19th Regiment’s movements. He recalled leaving Benedict for Baltimore, then marching through Washington and out the Alexandria road while guarding wagon trains bound for the front. The regiment eventually joined the Army of the Potomac in Virginia.
“We came from Benedict to Baltimore, and from Baltimore we marched on to Washington and out the Alexandria road guarding wagon trains going to the front.”
Some of Moulton’s recollections of the regiment’s Virginia service were compressed by the passage of time. He later said that the 19th had been in skirmishes at Cold Harbor, the Wilderness, and Fairfax. Those statements are best treated as veteran recollection rather than a precise campaign itinerary. His account becomes much more specific when he reaches the event that dominated the regiment’s wartime history: the assault at Petersburg on July 30, 1864.
The Battle of the Crater
Moulton said that he took part in the charge at Petersburg. The 19th USCT was one of the Black regiments committed to the disastrous Union assault following the explosion of the mine beneath the Confederate lines. The regiment suffered severe casualties in the fighting around the Crater. Moulton survived without a recorded gunshot wound, but in 1921 he said that he had been “mashed in one side” during the charge.
His memory also preserved the death of Major Joseph Rockwood, one of the 19th’s officers killed in the battle. Moulton recalled that “we had a major killed on the breastworks at Petersburg” and named him as Rockwood. That detail is one of several indications that, despite errors in dates and geography after almost sixty years, his memory of the men and the most dramatic moments of his service remained strong.
In the same examination Moulton named officers and enlisted comrades he remembered: Captain Noah, Captain Stewart, Lieutenant Murphy, First Sergeant John Sutton, Sergeant Norris, Peter Savage, Sergeant Glasgow, Dan Crowdey, Isaac Goldsbury, and Fred Barnes. He also remembered John Ennis of West River, Maryland, who was killed at Petersburg. Such names make his deposition valuable not only as a record of his own life but also as evidence of the personal network within the regiment.
Richmond and the End of the War
Moulton remembered the regiment remaining on the Petersburg front until the following spring, then moving to the Fort Harrison area outside Richmond. He said that the men watched the Confederate evacuation, entered Richmond, and then took a position at Manchester on the south side of the James River while the main Union forces pursued General Robert E. Lee.
“We marched to Fort Harrison in front of Richmond and layed there and guarded and saw Richmond evacuated. We went into Richmond and took a stand at Manchester near Richmond.”
This portion of the testimony is particularly evocative. Moulton had enlisted when slavery was still legal in Maryland. Little more than a year later, he stood with a Black Union regiment at the Confederate capital as the rebellion collapsed.
Eighteen Months on the Rio Grande
The 19th USCT’s service did not end with Lee’s surrender. The regiment was sent by sea to Texas, arriving in June 1865. Moulton remembered the voyage as being made on two ships and taking several weeks. Soon after reaching Texas he became ill and was reported sick in his quarters from July through October.
His Company A service helps explain one of the strongest details in his pension testimony. Regimental orders dated February 8, 1866 directed Company A to Rancho San Maria on the Rio Grande. Moulton remembered camping at a place he called Santa Maria for nearly a year, performing guard duty connected with a ferry across the river. Later regimental orders documented patrols between San Maria and neighboring posts. His personal memory and the surviving regimental orders thus fit together unusually well.
“We were in Texas eighteen months but not at Brownsville all the time. We camped at a place called Santa Maria nearly one year doing guard duty for a ferry across the Rio Grande river.”
Moulton also remembered guard duty opposite Mexican forces under General Mariano Escobedo’s opponents in the turbulent border region. His wording was imprecise, but it reflects the larger reason Federal troops remained on the Rio Grande after the Civil War: the United States was watching the conflict in Mexico and maintaining a military presence along the border.
The Long Journey Home
Moulton’s account of the regiment’s return is another unusually vivid passage. He remembered leaving Brownsville by boat, stopping at New Orleans without going ashore, then stopping at Norfolk, where the soldiers changed to vessels bound for Baltimore. His pension testimony said that they landed in Baltimore and were mustered out on Fort Hill. The formal military record gives his muster-out date as January 15, 1867, at Brownsville, Texas. The two accounts can be read together: the Army paperwork closed his service in Texas, while Moulton remembered the physical homecoming and final settlement in Baltimore.
Work and Family after the War
Moulton returned to Baltimore and spent most of the rest of his life there. He told the pension examiner that he had worked at seasonal and manual jobs, including picking berries, shucking oysters in winter, and working in brick yards during the summer. By 1921 he described himself as a retired laborer and lived at 811 Peach Alley.
He said that he had lived with several women during his life but had been legally married only once. On December 23, 1908, he married Elizabeth Carroll in Baltimore. The marriage record in his pension file identifies her as Elizabeth Carroll; Moulton said her maiden name was Elizabeth Brannuck and that she had previously been married to Sidney Carroll, a stevedore who drowned in the bay. Moulton also acknowledged one daughter, Rachel, from an earlier relationship.
Pension Investigation and the Proof of Identity
The reason so much of Moulton’s story survives is that the Bureau of Pensions investigated whether James Davis of Baltimore was really the James Moulton who had served in Company A. The inquiry produced several days of sworn testimony in December 1921. Moulton explained the two surnames, described his officers and comrades, recounted the regiment’s movements, and displayed his discharge certificate.
The government also questioned fellow 19th USCT veteran Loyd Kane. Kane had served in Company G and had known Moulton during the war and afterward in Baltimore. Although he was uncertain about Moulton’s company, Kane was emphatic about the essential point: the Baltimore man known as Jim Davis was the same man the soldiers had called Jim Moulton in the 19th Regiment. This corroborating testimony helped connect the elderly pensioner to the young soldier of 1863.
Death and Burial
James Moulton died at his home, 811 Peach Alley, Baltimore, on May 8, 1925. His death record gave the cause as cerebral thrombosis. Undertaker Morris L. Brown, who had known him for more than a decade, testified that Moulton owned no real or personal property and left only a small amount of money, expected to be consumed by burial and medical expenses. He was buried on May 11 in the U.S. National Cemetery at Loudon Park, now Baltimore National Cemetery. His widow, Elizabeth, subsequently applied for the pension that had accrued at his death.
Why James Moulton’s Story Matters
James Moulton was not an officer, a decorated hero, or a man whose name appeared often in official reports. That is precisely why his pension testimony is so valuable. It gives us the war as remembered by a Black private: recruiting at Benedict, the march toward the front, wagon-train duty, the charge at Petersburg, the fall of Richmond, the long postwar occupation on the Rio Grande, and the voyage home.
His recollections must be used carefully. Nearly sixty years separated the events from the 1921 examination, and some names, dates, and campaign locations were blurred. Yet where his memories can be compared with military and regimental records, many of the most distinctive details are confirmed. Company A really was ordered to Rancho San Maria; Major Rockwood really was killed at Petersburg; the regiment really did serve along the Rio Grande before returning home. Moulton’s testimony therefore does more than tell one soldier’s story. It supplies a rare enlisted man’s voice for the history of the 19th USCT itself.
Sources Consulted
• James Moulton (James Davis), pension and supporting records, National Archives and Records Administration; user-supplied file.
• Robert K. Summers, Maryland’s Black Civil War Soldiers: 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops (2020), including the James Moulton entry and reproduced regimental orders.
• Henry Goddard Thomas, “The Colored Troops at Petersburg,” Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 4.
• Henry G. Thomas, “Twenty-Two Hours Prisoner of War in Dixie,” War Papers, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Maine Commandery, vol. 1 (1898).
• James H. Rickard, Services with Colored Troops in Burnside’s Corps (Providence: Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 1894).
• U.S. Army regimental records and orders for the 19th U.S. Colored Troops, as reproduced and cited in Maryland’s Black Civil War Soldiers.