Thomas Custer
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Tom Custer distinguished himself by winning successively the brevets of Captain, Major and Lieutenant-colonel, although he was barely twenty years of age when the Civil War ended. He was awarded two Medals of Honor during the war for capturing Confederate regimental flags (at Namozine Church on April 3, 1865, and at Sayler's Creek on April 6, 1865), the first to ever do so, and one of nineteen ever to receive the dual honor.
He was appointed first lieutenant in the 7th Cavalry in 1866. He was wounded in the Washita campaign of the Indian Wars, in 1868. He later served on Reconstruction duty in South Carolina, and participated in the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873 and the Black Hills Expedition of 1874. He was appointed captain in 1875, and participated in the arrest of the Lakota Rain-in-the-Face for murder at the trading post at Standing Rock Agency, and was the commanding officer of Company C of the 7th. During the Little Bighorn campaign of 1876 he served as aid-de-camp to Lt. Col. George A. Custer and fell with his brother. It was widely rumored that Rain-in-the-Face, who had escaped from captivity and was a participant at the Little Bighorn, had cut out Tom Custer's heart as revenge. This tale seems apocryphal. Tom Custer was buried on the battlefield, but exhumed the next year and reburied in Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery.
Categories: 1845 births | 1876 deaths | Medal of Honor recipients | American Civil War people | People from Ohio | U.S. Army officers
