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Gregory, Edgar M. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/gregory-edgar-m

Edgar Mantlebert Gregory: Union Army Officer and Freedmen's Bureau Official (1804–1871)

Revised by: Randolph B. "Mike" Campbell

Published: 1952

Updated: September 7, 2022

Edgar Mantlebert Gregory, Union Army officer and Freedmen's Bureau official, was born in Sand Lake, New York, on January 1, 1804, the son of Justus Abram and Clarissa (Downs) Gregory. In 1850, he lived in Cincinnati, working as a lumber merchant, and by 1860, he had moved to Philadelphia where he pursued the same occupation. Gregory married Ellen Young sometime before 1850, and they had at least four children. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted and was commissioned a colonel in the Ninety-First Pennsylvania Regiment on December 4, 1861. He was wounded at Chancellorsville, Virginia, on March 3, 1863. After his participation in the Richmond campaign in August 1864, he was brevetted brigadier general, on October 17, 1864, and placed in charge of the Second Brigade, New York Volunteers. At the end of the war he was appointed assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas and took over his duties at the customhouse at Galveston in September 1865. By January 1866, he had appointed twenty-one local agents to assist him in attempting to settle labor question by promoting the contract system between freedmen and their former owners. In the fall of 1865 he ordered that henceforth any labor contract would constitute a lien on the crop worked. He supervised relief work and labor contracts for the freedmen and intervened in court cases to settle disputes between Freedmen and employers. In January 1866 David G. Burnet attacked the Bureau, accused Gregory of inspiring freedmen to hate their employers, and recommended his removal, which occurred on April 2, 1866. On April 13, 1866, after commendation by the national Freedmen's Bureau for ability and energy in discharge of his duties, he was relieved of his position and left Galveston for a new assignment. He mustered out of the United States Army in November 1867 and returned to his home in Pennsylvania. Soon, he became United States Marshall for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, a position that he held until his death on November 9, 1871. He was buried in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.

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Bibliography:

Mark Mayo Boatner, Civil War Dictionary (New York: David McKay, 1959). Dallas Herald, April 26, 1866. Claude Elliott, "The Freedmen's Bureau in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 56 (July 1952). Galveston News, January 28, April 2, 1866. Alton Hornsby, Jr., "The Freedmen's Bureau Schools in Texas, 1865–1870," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 76 (April 1963). Charles W. Ramsdell, "Presidential Reconstruction in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 11, 12 (April 1908, January 1909). Charles W. Ramsdell, Reconstruction in Texas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1910; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1970). William L. Richter, The Army in Texas during Reconstruction, 1865–1870 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987). Third Pennsylvania Cavalry Association, History of the Third Pennsylvania Cavalry, Sixtieth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers in the American Civil War, 1861–1865 (Philadelphia: Franklin, 1905).

The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.

Revised by Randolph B. "Mike" Campbell, “Gregory, Edgar M.,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed April 11, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/gregory-edgar-m.

TID: FGR52

Original Publication Date:
1952
Most Recent Revision Date:
September 7, 2022

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