William Rogers

          April 1865 was an important month in our history.  President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865 and died the next day.  On April 18 Confederate General Joseph Johnson surrendered to General William Sherman and the Civil War was effectively over.  Booth was shot and killed April 26.

          The documents shown below identify Private William Rogers, age 22, born in Ohio County, and further shows that he enlisted in the U. S. Army on 29 April 1865.  William is further identified as a slave of Mary Rogers, Ohio County.  William died on the Steamship Bermuda of gastritis 28 Nov 1865 while en route to Helena, Arkansas. This document says that two other men, presumably from Ohio County, entered service at the same time as William Rogers:  George H. Shultz and Charles Jackson.  William was a member of 6^th Regiment, U. S. Cavalry.

          I was unable to find William in the 1860 census records.

          I found the following regarding the Steamer Bermuda:

          One of the earliest blockade- runners to be constructed in the United Kingdom was the iron-screw steamer Bermuda, 897 tons gross, built by Pearce and Lockwood, in 1861, at Stockton-on-Tees, and fitted with engines of 135 h.p. by Fossick and Hackworth. She was completed in August and moved round to Liverpool, where she was registered in the name of Edwin Haigh, a local cotton broker. Within a few days of the registration, however, a certificate of sale was executed in favour of A. S. Henckel and George Alfred Trenholme, of Charleston. She made several successful trips, and was manned by a crew of 30 under command of Captain Eugene Tessier, and later Captain C. W. Westendorff, until seized and condemned by the Federal Government towards the end of 1862.