Henry Thomas Dixon – Major, United States Army

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Henry Thomas Dixon of Virginia

Appointed from Pennsylvania, Additional Paymaster of U. S. Volunteers, 1 June 1861
Honorably mustered out, 31 July 1865
Died 11 November 1865

Henry Thomas Dixon was born on 28 July 1803 at Salem, Fauquier County, Virginia, the son of John Edward Henry Turner Dixon and Maria Turner Dixon.  He married Annie Elizabeth Brown on 1 January 1835 in Washington County, Maryland.

Courtesy of Linda Sundquist: January 2008:

Henry was born and killed in Virginia, although during the war and after, he lived in Washington, D. C.  His home was about 4 blocks from the White House. My grandmother remained in the home until her death and she was buried next to him.

I have never run across any information about him appointed from Pennsylvania.  I just went through my file again and have no record of that fact.  Henry was honorably discharged by August, but the Pension files I have indicated that on November 8, 1865, he had an appointment with President Johnson to see about “obtaining a position in the regular Army.”

Because he was a Virginian who had supported Lincoln and the Union, he had lost virtually everything – land, home, property.  President Johnson approved and sent the endorsement to the Secretary of War and on the same day, he was assured that a placement would be his within a few weeks. Two days later, he was shot and killed in a duel on a street (he died the next day) in Alexandria, Virginia. He had been the only man in Fauquier County, Virginia,  to vote for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and his vote had garnered him much dislike in Virginia.

He was originally buried near the family home, but my ggggrandmother had him moved to Arlington a few years after his death.  She was buried next to him during  a snowstorm in 1899.

DIXON, HENRY T

  • MAJ PAYMASTER USV CW
  • DATE OF DEATH: 11/11/1865
  • BURIED AT: SECTION 1 SITE LOT 683
    ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

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