Jay Caulley and Jennifer North

Powhatan Beaty was born in Richmond, Virginia on October 8th, 1837. In 1849, Mr. Beaty came to Cincinnati. Little is known of his early years living in Cincinnati.

He began his service career in the Third Regiment, Company 1 of the Black Brigade.

Beaty then sought to enlist in the Union Army. George Washington Williams’ book, Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, reads:

Governor David Tod, of Ohio, had insisted from the first that Negro troops should receive the same pay and bounty as other troops, and waited for the Government to change its attitude on this matter. In the meantime, however, he encouraged the recruitment of colored troops in Ohio for Massachusetts. Mr. O.S.B. Wall, a citizen of Oberlin, had recruited colored troops in Ohio under the direction of Major George L. Stearns, who had his headquarters at Buffalo, NY. On the morning of the 15th of June, 1863, a squad of forty-eight recruits, headed by Powhatan Beaty, arrived at Columbus, Ohio and reported to Mr. Wall to be forwarded to Boston, Massachusetts. Just before the men arrived he received a telegram from Major Stearns announcing that the Massachusetts regiments were full, and instructed him to send forward no more recruits. He (Mr. Wall) distributed his recruits among the hospitable colored citizens of Columbus, and immediately repaired to the State House to secure an interview with the Governor. He explained his dilemma; that he had forty eight recruits on his hands whom he had promised to put in Massachusetts regiments, and besought the Governor to accept the regiment of soldiers from this character from Ohio, but that thus far his efforts had been unavailing. However, he promised Wall to try the Department once more, and requested him to call the next morning for an answer...

Powhatan Beaty enlisted in the 5th USCT Company G and was appointed to the rank of 1st Sergeant. He is most famous for winning the Congressional Medal of Honor.

...On September 29, 1864, the color bearer was killed and Sgt. Beatty’s company was in retreat. Noticing the absence of the flag he went back the distance of 600 feet, recaptured the flag under fire, and the officers being killed, took charge of the remnants of his company. General Benjamin Butler witnessed the incident and at the time when the above medal was presented, he also presented him with a silver medal (Butler Medal)...

During the Civil War, there were only seventeen congressional medals awarded to soldiers. Four of which were won by African-Americans from an Ohio regiment. Along with James H. Bronson, Milton M. Holland, and Robert A. Pinn, Sgt. Beaty was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

This is to certify, that Powhatan Beaty was enrolled on the ninth day of June, 1863, to serve three years, and was discharged on the twentieth day of September, 1865, by reason of muster out of company while holding the grade of First Sergeant, in Company G Fifth Regiment of US Colored Infantry: that a medal of honor was awarded to him on the fifteenth day of March, 1865, for gallant and meritorious conduct in taking command of his company after all of the officers had been killed or wounded, and leading it in action at Chapins Farm, Va., September 29th, 1864; that his name was entered and recorded on the Army and Navy Medal of Honor Roll on the ninth day of May, 1916, as authorized under the provisions of the Act of Congress approved April 27, 1916, and that he is entitled to receive the special pension granted by that Act. Given at the War Department, Washington DC, this sixteenth day of September, 1916.

After the war, Powhatan Beaty returned to Cincinnati. He lived at Serman Avenue and McNeal Street Norwood. He was a cabinetmaker, janitor, and a porter on a steamboat.

...I was a porter on a steamboat, "City of Vicksburg", which ran from St. Louis to Vicksburg and I incurred a hernia of left side by lifting a trunk which I did as one of my duties as a porter and this occurred on June 27, 1873.

He was also employed at the Lincoln and Blaine Clubs. In a pension report he stated that he was unable to earn a support by manual labor by reason of defective eye sight, fracture in skull caused by falling on twig in a charge at New Market Heights, Va. He married Mary Le Beaty, and they had three children: A. Lee Beaty (born 1871), Powhatan Beaty (born 1877), and John Beaty (born 1879).

One of his sons, A. Lee Beaty, then went on to become a member of the Ohio Legislature. W.P. Dabney’s Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens reads:

...Attorney A. Lee Beaty, son of Mary C. And Powhatan Beaty, was born September 2, 1869, in this city. He was a pupil of the old Eastern District School, Gaines High School, and Law Department of Cincinnati University. He resided in the East End, near Broadway, then the aristocratic section for high school colored people of the early days. His mother was born on McAllister Street, under the shadow of the Old Dumas House. His father, Powhatan Beaty, a veteran of the Civil War, was employed at the Lincoln and Baine Clubs and so young Beaty, even then conspicuously intelligent, came in close touch with bright stars of the political firmament. As a boy he clerked for Old Man Gordon, later went to Washington as an attaché of the government, came back to Cincinnati as a result of change in the administration, got into the post office, studied law, went to the Ohio Legislature twice, and now has distinguished himself as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of this state. His ability was most clearly manifested in the recent wholesale conviction of police officials. He married Miss Messie Buckner, who has rendered him every encouragement in the career he has so successfully followed and they have accumulated large holdings of very valuable real estate.

Powhatan Beaty died on December 6, 1916 of Apoplexy. He was buried in lot 95, section A of Union Baptist Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Maintained by the Washington Research History Class

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