Background
Robert Ransom was born on 12 February 1828 at his family plantation, Bridle Creek, in Warren County. He was the son of Robert and Priscilla West Coffield Whitaker Ransom.
West Point, New York, United States
In 1850 Robert Ransom graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Robert Ransom was born on 12 February 1828 at his family plantation, Bridle Creek, in Warren County. He was the son of Robert and Priscilla West Coffield Whitaker Ransom.
Robert Ransom and his brother, Matt, were educated by private tutors and in academies in Warren and Franklin counties. In 1850 Robert graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Robert Ransom, who spent 1850-1851 at the cavalry school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was a splendid horseman in the Dragoons, and he served as a scout in Kansas and New Mexico before returning to West Point as a cavalry instructor in 1854. The following year he was promoted to the first lieutenant. After participating in the Sioux expedition, he was promoted to captain in 1861.
He resigned his commission when the Civil War began. Like his brother Matt, Robert Ransom entered the Confederate Army. He served as a captain and later colonel of cavalry, with a command in Vienna, Virginia, in the early days of the war.
Promoted to brigadier general on March 6, 1862, he later organized Johnston’s and Beauregard’s Cavalry in the west and southwest. He fought in the Seven Days' battles and at Harper’s Ferry, distinguished himself at Sharpsburg, and commanded a division at Fredericksburg. On May 26, 1863, he was promoted to major general and went to North Carolina to defend the Weldon Railroad.
In April 1864, he was sent to Richmond. He fought at the Bermuda Hundred and Drewry's Bluff and commanded the cavalry during General J. A. Early’s raid on Washington in July 1864. In November of the same year, illness forced him to accept a command in Charleston, South Carolina, where he remained for the rest of the war.
A farmer in Warren County, North Carolina, until 1878, Ransom was also an express agent and city marshal at Wilmington, North Carolina, and a civil engineer in charge of river and harbor improvements in New Bern, North Carolina.
By Robert's first marriage to Mary Elizabeth Huntt in 1856, he had eight children. In 1884, after his first wife's death, he married Katherine DeWitt Willcox.