Jackson Sargent

He scaled the enemy works first and planted his flag on top.

Jackson George Sargent grew up in Stowe, Vermont, in the family of Jeremiah and Sophronia Robinson Sargent. Born in December in the early 1840s, he was raised with his brothers and sister in the rural community where he would spend much of his later life. When the Civil War began, he enlisted at Stowe in August 1861 and entered Company D of the 5th Vermont Infantry as a private.

The regiment became part of the Vermont Brigade in the Army of the Potomac. Sargent's service extended from the early campaigns around Washington and the Virginia Peninsula through the army's later fighting in Virginia. By the final spring of the war he was a sergeant trusted with the regimental colours.

On 2 April 1865 Union forces assaulted the Confederate defences at Petersburg. During the attack Sargent climbed the enemy works and planted the colours on the parapet. His official Medal of Honor citation identifies him as the first to do so, recognizing a conspicuous act at the head of the advancing troops (Congressional Medal of Honor Society, https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/jackson-g-sargent). Carrying the flag exposed him while also marking a point his comrades could follow through the defences.

After the surrender campaign he received a commission as first lieutenant in Company K of his regiment in May 1865. He returned to Vermont after discharge and married Caroline Harlow. They raised three sons while he worked as a farmer in the Stowe and Hyde Park area. His Medal of Honor was issued on 28 October 1891, more than twenty-six years after Petersburg.

Caroline died in 1895 and their son Fred in 1898. Sargent later married Clara Douglass, who died in 1919. He continued dairy farming into old age and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic's H. H. Smith Post. He died at his Maple Street home in Stowe on 2 October 1921. His funeral included military honours, and he was buried beside his wives in the local cemetery.