Gantt, Thomas T.

Born: 1814-07-22 Georgetown, District of Columbia

Died: 1889-06-17 Saint Louis, Missouri

Flourished: Saint Louis, Missouri

Alternate name: Gant

Thomas T. Gantt, attorney, briefly studied at Georgetown College (later University) before he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1831. His plans for a military career ended when an injury forced him to leave the academy in 1834. Gantt turned to the law, studying in Maryland under Thomas G. Pratt. He passed the bar in 1838, and within one year moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he entered a law partnership with prominent attorney Montgomery Blair. President James K. Polk appointed Gantt as U.S. district attorney for the District of Missouri in 1845. During the cholera epidemic that swept St. Louis in 1849, he organized measures to combat the outbreak. City officials appointed Gantt as city counselor in 1853, and he helped quell a riot the following year while acting as a volunteer police captain. By 1860, he owned real estate valued at $80,000 and possessed personal property valued at $2,000. On the advent of the Civil War, Gantt was a leader in the Unconditional Union Party, and served from 1861 to 1862 as an assistant aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel under George B. McClellan. In 1845, Gantt married Mary Carroll Tabbs; the pair had no children.

J. Thomas Scharf, History of Saint Louis City and County (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883), 2:1485-86; William Hyde and Howard L. Conard, eds., Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis (New York: Southern History, 1899), 2:865-66; American & Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), 11 June 1845, 2:5; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 3, St. Louis, St. Louis County, MO, 388; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 3, St. Louis, St. Louis County, MO, 175; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903), 1:444; The St. Louis Republic (MO), 18 June 1889, 3:4; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 18 June 1889, 8:2; Gravestone, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, MO.