b. 12/06/1829 County Galway, Ireland. d. 27/03/1912 Lexington, Massachusetts.
DATE OF MOH ACTION: 15/05/1864 Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia.
Thomas Cosgrove MOH
Thomas Cosgrove, a vegetable farmer in Lexington, was 40 years old when he enlisted in Company F, 40th Massachusetts Infantry to fight in the Civil War. When 26-year-old Thomas left Ireland to make his fortune in America, no one could have imagined that their friend, standing 5 feet, three inches tall and weighing 130 pounds, would one day become a war hero. But his feistiness and courage earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Cosgrove unknowingly claimed another honor on April 3, 1865 when, on a scouting patrol watching the residents of Richmond evacuate the city ahead of the advancing Union troops, he became the first Union soldier to enter the city, retrieving a banner captured from the 39th New York at Fair Oaks.
After the war, he returned to Lexington and his farm. When the War with Spain began in 1898, he “announced his readiness to once more head to the front” and invited skeptics to meet him in a turkey shoot. He was an active and beloved member of the George G. Mead GAR post 119. Thomas Cosgrove died in 1912 and is buried in Munroe Cemetery. Each year on Memorial Day, the Lexington Minute Men conduct a flag wave-over ceremony at his grave.
MOH CITATION:
Individually demanded and received the surrender of 7 armed Confederates concealed in a cellar, disarming and marching them in as prisoners of war.
BURIAL LOCATION: MUNROE CEMETERY, LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
GAR LOT 400, GRAVE 1
LOCATION OF MEDAL: VERMONT VETERANS MILITIA MUSEUM (1863 & 1904 DESIGNS), COLCHESTER, VERMONT.
