Background
Thomas Childs was born on March 03, 1796 at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Dr. Timothy and Rachael (Easton) Childs.
Thomas Childs was born on March 03, 1796 at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Dr. Timothy and Rachael (Easton) Childs.
Childs was appointed to the United States Military Academy in 1813. He graduated in 1814.
In 1814 Childs was promoted in the army to third lieutenant of artillery and he served in the Niagara campaign of that year. For spiking the enemy’s guns in the successful sortie that raised the siege of Fort Erie on September 17, 1814, he was presented with a captured British quadrant “by order of the President. ” After the war Childs settled into the routine life of an officer in the regular army, becoming in due course first lieutenant (1818) and captain (1826).
In order to restore the interrupted communication between the military posts in the second Seminole War, he planned the successful attack on Fort Drane on August 21, 1836, for which he was brevetted major. He was later brevetted lieutenant-colonel “for gallant conduct and repeated successes” in the Florida War. In the Mexican War he was brevetted colonel for his conduct in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. Ordered by General Worth to take Loma de Independencia, which towered seven or eight hundred feet above the Bishop’s Palace at Monterey, Childs led six companies of artillery and infantry and 200 Texas riflemen, up the rocky, chaparral-covered hillside.
The almost vertical ascent was begun at 3 A. M. on September 22, 1846 in the midst of a torrential rain, and by daybreak Childs was within 100 yards of the breastwork of sandbags, a position considered impregnable by the Mexican generals. The Mexican battery was stormed and Worth’s troops enabled to capture the western gate of the city. In the following year, Childs, with a strong garrison, was stationed at Jalapa as military governor from April to June 1847 by General Scott, with orders to keep open as long as possible the line of communication with Vera Cruz.
With Scott’s advance on Mexico City Childs was called to Puebla, where he was besieged by Santa Anna. In the siege “the chief element of the defence was the large, robust, fine-featured Childs”. For his defense of Puebla he was brevetted brigadier-general (1847). There were some complaints of his administration as civil and military governor of Puebla from September-October 1847), but the Bishop of Puebla admitted that Childs did everything he could to prevent abuses. Childs was in command of military operations in East Florida from 1852 until his death from yellow fever at Fort Brooke, Florida.
On January 5, 1819, Childs married Ann Eliza Coryton, of Alexandria, Virginia, by whom he had nine children.
