Ransom, Thomas E. G.

Born: 1834-11-29 Norwich, Vermont

Died: 1864-10-29 Rome, Georgia

Flourished: 1851 to 1861 Illinois

Thomas E. G. Ransom, surveyor, engineer, and military officer, studied at Norwich University, where his father had been president. Following a break in his education during which he studied practical engineering on the Rutland and Burlington Railroad, Ransom returned to the school in 1848 to study civil engineering, and graduated in 1851. That same year he relocated permanently to Illinois, living initially in Peru, where he worked as an assistant engineer under his uncle for two years. From 1853 to 1855 he was a city surveyor and engineer for Peru, and a county surveyor for La Salle County. Late in 1855 he became a surveyor for the Chicago firm of A. J. Galloway & Co., the firm being land agents for the Illinois Central Railroad. While in Chicago, he also partnered in a land agency with Victor B. Bell. About 1857 Ransom become an agent for the Illinois Central in Fayette County, and oversaw surveying of the railroad’s lands there. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Ransom recruited a company in April of 1861 that became part of the Eleventh Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and of which he was elected captain. Ransom was involved in military actions at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg, the Texas coast, and Atlanta. He won praise for his service and was repeatedly promoted, achieving the rank of brigadier general of volunteers in November 1862, and being brevetted a major general of volunteers in September 1864. Ransom was wounded multiple times in combat, and died as a result of lingering wounds and illness. Politically, he was a Democrat. Ransom never married.

Terrence J. Winschel, “Ransom, Thomas Edward Greenfield,” American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18:157-58; T. F. McNeill, “Ransom, Thomas Edward Greenfield,” Dictionary of American Biography, ed. by Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935), 15:379-80; William Arba Ellis, ed., Norwich University, 1819-1911: Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor (Montpelier, VT: Capital City Press, 1911), 2:491-95; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Norwich, Windsor County, VT, 120; The Peru Weekly Chronicle (IL), 19 December 1855, 1:1; Chicago City Directory Supplement, May, 1856 (Chicago: Robert Fergus, 1856), 10; Henry C. Whitney to Abraham Lincoln and William H. Herndon; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Fayette County, IL, 38; Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Chicago Tribune (IL), 31 October 1864, 1:1-2; 16 November 1864, 4:3-4; Gravestone, Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum, Chicago, IL.