Emory, William H.

Born: 1811-09-07 Queen Annes County, Maryland

Died: 1887-12-01 Washington, D.C.

William H. Emory graduated from West Point in 1831 and served in the army as a second lieutenant for five years before resigning to become a civil engineer. He married Matilda W. Bache in 1838 and rejoined the army as a lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers. He surveyed and published maps and reports concerning the Midwest and Southwest and helped establish the northeastern border with British North America. He served in the Mexican War and surveyed extensively in the West. This resulted in an 1847 map which displayed, for the first time with accuracy, the land between the upper Rio Grande and the Pacific Ocean. He also published an account of the expedition in 1848. Emory was then assigned to help determine the boundary with Mexico as established by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which he completed in 1857 and was promoted to major. For the next four years, his assignments were in the West dealing with Mormons and, in 1861, disrupting Confederate movements and helping to keep Missouri in the Union. He served in both the eastern and western theaters throughout the Civil War, eventually earning the rank of brigadier general and commanding the Nineteenth Corps, most notably at the Battle of Cedar Creek.

Norman J. W. Thrower, "Emory, William Hemsley," American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 7:513-14; William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959).