Background
Martindale was born in Sandy Hill, Washington County, New York, the son of Congressman Henry C. Martindale and Minerva Hitchcock Martindale.
Martindale was born in Sandy Hill, Washington County, New York, the son of Congressman Henry C. Martindale and Minerva Hitchcock Martindale.
He entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1831, and graduated in 1835.
He was appointed a brevet second lieutenant, but resigned from the Army the next year and began to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1838, and commenced practice in Batavia, New New York He was District Attorney of Genesee County from 1842 to 1846, and from 1848 to 1851.
Then he removed to Rochester, New New York
In August 1861, Martindale was commissioned a brigadier general of volunteers in the Union Army, and participated in all the battles of the Peninsula Campaign in V Corps. After the retreat from Malvern Hill, he was brevetted a major general of volunteers, and appointed Military Governor of Washington, District of Columbia, a post he held from November 1862 to May 1864.
Afterward he returned to field service, fighting with the XVIII Corps in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, the Battle of Cold Harbor and the Siege of St. Petersburg, commanding the corps briefly in mid-July 1864. In September 1864 he resigned his commission because of bad health.
He was New York State Attorney General from 1866 to 1867, elected in 1865 on the Republican ticket.
In 1877, one of his clients tried to shoot him at his law office in Rochester, New New York He died in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France, and was buried at the Batavia Cemetery in Batavia, New New York