Sergeant Charles Henry Brown
Civil War Colored Troops hero and community activist
Charles Henry Brown was an enslaved person from Charles County, Maryland. He served in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) First Regiment of Colored Volunteers, of the District of Columbia between 1862 and 1866.
During the Civil War, he escaped slavery to join the Union Army, arriving at Mason’s Island, an African American recruitment station in the middle of the Potomac River just south of Washington D.C. Brown and several friends enlisted together and later saw service in North Carolina and Petersburg, Virginia. In 1865 he was wounded in Wilmington but refused treatment, continuing to serve until the Confederate forces surrendered the city.
He returned to Charles County a hero in his community and built a log cabin and later a beautiful two-story Victorian dwelling that still stands today. Charles Brown was one of 27 men who established the Mount Hope Baptist Church in 1867 (the oldest African American congregation in Charles County). There he served for many years on the church’s trustee board. He is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery.
Additional Resources
A story of Sergeant Charles Henry Brown life and his bravery is documented in the book ”Black, Copper and Bright” authored by C. R. Gibbs.
Christine Cohn. Review of Gibbs, C. R., Black, Copper, and Bright: The District of Columbia’s Black Civil War Regiment. H-DC, H-Net Reviews. April, 2006.
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11603
