Robert Huston Milroy

Robert Huston Milroy was born June 11, 1816, near Salem, Indiana. In 1840, he entered the Military Academy of Captain Partridge in Norwich, Vermont. He graduated in 1843 with the degrees of Master of Arts, Master of Military Science, and Master of Civil Engineering. During the Mexican War, Milroy served as commander of company C, 1st Indiana Volunteer Infantry. He attended law school at Indiana University, passing the bar in 1849. He began practicing law in Delphi, was elected a member of the Constitutional Convention of Indiana, and, in 1853, was appointed judge of the Circuit Court of Indiana. In 1854, Milroy moved to Renssellaer to resume the practice of law. Years later, the citizens of Renssellaer erected a bronze statue in his memory. Before Lincoln’s inauguration, Milroy issued a call for organization of a volunteer company in Renssellaer and the surrounding area. Milroy was unanimously chosen colonel of this regiment, the 9th Indiana Volunteers. His company was the first mustered into service from northern Indiana and “the first regiment from Indiana to tread upon the sacred soil of Virginia.” Milroy took part in George B. McClellan’s western Virginia campaign and on September 3, 1861, was promoted to brigadier general. In January 1862, Milroy assumed command of the Cheat Mountain District; he later took command of the Mountain Department and saw action in the Shenandoah Valley campaign. At the battle of the Second Manassas, he gathered troops and continued to hold his ground while his own brigade returned for ammunition. Milroy was ordered to take command at Winchester, Virginia, and, on November 29, 1862, was commissioned to major general. On June 26, 1863, he was relieved of his command and arrested following his escape with two or three hundred calvary to Harper’s Ferry. He had lost over three thousand prisoners, twenty-three pieces of artillery, plus numerous dead and wounded to Ewell’s 2nd Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. After ten months, a Court of Inquiry “exonerated” Robert Milroy. On May 6, 1864, he was sent to Nashville to serve under Major General G. H. Thomas for duty in organizing and assigning militia regiments. Following the Civil War, Robert H. Milroy was a trustee of the Wabash and Erie Canal Company and later was an Indiana agent in Olympia, Washington. Gray Eagle, as his men affectionately called him because of his fearless eyes and gray hair, died March 29, 1890, in Olympia and was buried there in the Masonic Cemetery.