Samuel Truehart

Portrait of Private Samuel Truehart, 5th US Colored Cavalry

David Brown

Quick Facts

Significance:

United States Colored Troop soldier who attained his freedom by enlisting in one of the regiments organized at Camp Nelson during the Civil War.

Place of Birth:

Shelby County, Kentucky

Date of Birth:

1843

Place of Death:

Atchison, Kansas

Date of Death:

August 12, 1897

Place of Burial:

Atchison, Kansas

Cemetery Name:

Mount Vernon Cemetery

Early Life and Civil War

Samuel Truehart was born in 1843 in Shelby County, Kentucky, and was enslaved in Frankfort, the state capital, before the Civil War. During the summer of 1864, he married Mary Elliot, an enslaved cook at a boarding house in Frankfort who supposedly ran away from her enslaver to marry Truehart. At the age of 21, Truehart secured his freedom by enlisting in the US Army at Camp Nelson on September 10, 1864. Two days later, he was mustered in as a private in Company E, 5th US Colored Cavalry.

Truehart presumably fought with his regiment in the First Battle of Saltville in southwest Virginia in early October 1864, but he was absent sick in the hospital at Camp Nelson for the rest of the year. He performed garrison and guard duty at Camp Nelson and various points in Kentucky and Arkansas throughout 1865 and early 1866. Truehart was mustered out with his regiment on March 16, 1866, in Helena, Arkansas, and returned to Kentucky.

Post-War Life

After the war, Truehart and his wife had four children together in Frankfort. In the mid-1870s, the family moved to western Kansas to take possession of a 40-acre plot of farmland granted to Truehart by the US government. The family’s move was part of the migration of Black “Exodusters” from Kentucky. They settled in Atchison because Mary refused to live on the remote farm in western Kansas. Truehart also worked as a teamster and was known for being an industrious man. Truehart remained in Atchison until his death in 1897 at the age of 54.