James Flannigan (Medal of Honor)

He helped sixteen men defend wagons against hostile cavalry.

James Flannigan was born in Canada in 1833 to Irish immigrant parents, James and Catherine Fury Flanagan. Family research places his birth at Montreal. His parents later settled on a dairy farm near Louisville in St Lawrence County, New York, where he attended country schools. As a young adult he moved west and worked in the lumber trade before settling in Minnesota.

He enlisted at Fort Snelling on 7 October 1861 and joined Company H of the 2nd Minnesota Infantry as a private. The regiment served in the western Union armies. On 15 February 1863 Flannigan was part of a small escort gathering supplies near Nolensville, Tennessee, when Confederate cavalry attacked their wagons.

The official Medal of Honor citation credits sixteen men with defending the train against approximately 125 cavalrymen, repelling the attack and saving the wagons (Congressional Medal of Honor Society, https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/james-flannigan). The contemporary report by Brigadier-General James Steedman describes the escort taking shelter in a cabin near the wagons and beating off the mounted attackers. Two Union men were slightly wounded. The report and a brigade commendation naming Flannigan are reproduced in the Minnesota Medal of Honor Memorial's documented biography, https://www.minnesotamedalofhonormemorial.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Flannigan-James-Bio-June-6.pdf.

Flannigan continued serving after Nolensville, re-enlisted in 1864 and remained until the war's end. He advanced through corporal to sergeant. In 1865 he returned to his family's dairy farm in northern New York. He married Kate Mallen of Waddington in September 1868, and they had four children: Frederick James, Agnes, Thomas and John.

His Medal of Honor was issued on 11 September 1897, long after he had returned to civilian life. He died on 4 October 1905 and was buried in St Lawrence Cemetery at Louisville. His military record preserves the contribution of one of the Canadian-born volunteers who served in Minnesota's Union regiments.