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Harry Gilmor was an American Confederate soldier. After the war Gilmor engaged in business in Baltimore, and was police commissioner of that city.
Background
Harry Ward Gilmor was born on January 24, 1838, near Baltimore, Maryland. He was the son of Robert and Ellen (Ward) Gilmor.
His father was the grandson of Robert Gilmor, who came from Scotland to the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1767, removed to Baltimore in 1779, and built up an extensive shipping business.
His mother was a daughter of William H. Ward, of Wilmington, Delaware, a descendant of William Ward, who was established in Cecil County, Maryland, prior to 1683.
Education
Young Gilmor was privately educated, spent some time in farming in Wisconsin and Nebraska, and then returned to assist in farming his father’s place.
Career
Gilmor served in the local militia. His family, strong secessionists, were under surveillance in the early days of the Civil War, and he himself was arrested and detained for two weeks, on suspicion which he justified soon after his release.
Determining to join the Confederate army, he managed to cross the upper Potomac, and enlisted under Ashby. In March 1882, he was commissioned captain of Company F, 12th Virginia Cavalry.
From then until near the end of the war, he served in the Shenandoah Valley and in Maryland, with an occasional incursion into Pennsylvania, and proved himself one of the most enterprising and daring of Confederate raiders.
Though engaged in some of the greater battles, as a member of a considerable force, he usually operated with a small number of men, carrying on partisan war after the manner of Marion and Sumter.
Captured while on a secret visit to his family near Baltimore, in September 1862, he was naturally held as a spy, but was eventually offered for exchange as an ordinary prisoner of war, and in February 1863 returned to duty with his company.
He was soon after commissioned major of a newly organized battalion, later known as the 2nd Maryland. In one of his most famous raids, in February 1864, he cut the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad near Harper’s Ferry, and was subsequently tried by court martial as a result of the wholesale robberies committed upon passengers by his men.
He was acquitted, as having given no sanction to theft, and as having taken reasonable measures to prevent it. When Early made his dash on Washington, in July 1864, Gilmor covered the army by raiding to the east, going even beyond Baltimore and destroying the railroad bridge over the Gunpowder River by running a burning train upon it.
Here he captured Gen. Franklin, who was returning to the North, disabled by a wound received in Louisiana, but the prisoner made his escape the same night. It was Gilmor who burned the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, soon after, most reluctantly obeying imperative orders from his superiors.
In a cavalry skirmish a little later he received a severe wound which indirectly caused his death nearly twenty years after. He was back in active service in the autumn, and served until his capture in February 1865.
After the war, Gilmor engaged in business in Baltimore, and was police commissioner of that city from 1874 to 1879.
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Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Gen. Sheridan wrote: “He is an energetic, shrewd, and unscrupulous scoundrel and a dangerous man. He must be closely watched, or he will escape”, an unfair estimate of his character, but good evidence of the annoyance he caused the Union commander.
In his official report, Sheridan refers to him as “Harry Gilmor, who appeared to be the last link between Maryland and the Confederacy, and whose person I desired in order that this link might be severed”.
Connections
Gilmor's wife was Mentoria Nixon Strong, daughter of Jasper Strong, an officer of the army from 119 to 1823, and afterwards a planter in Florida.