Jesse T. Barrick

He captured two well-armed enemy officers on a scout patrol.

Jesse T. Barrick was born in Columbiana County, Ohio, on 18 January 1841. His father Isaac worked as a wheelwright, and his mother was Mary. He grew up in a large family that later moved to Minnesota. In August 1861 he married Sarah Ann Strang at Faribault, shortly before entering the Union Army. Sarah also served the Union cause as a nurse.

Barrick joined Company H of the 3rd Minnesota Infantry at Fort Snelling in October 1861. The regiment guarded rail communications in Kentucky before serving at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Its surrender there in July 1862 brought captivity and parole. After returning to Minnesota it was reorganized, and in January 1863 it went south again for operations around Fort Heiman and the Tennessee River.

During a scouting expedition near Duck River between 26 May and 2 June 1863, Corporal Barrick encountered two armed Confederate guerrilla officers together. Acting alone, he secured their surrender and brought them in as prisoners. A contemporary report identified the captives as Major Algee and Captain Grizzel. The official Medal of Honor citation recognizes his single-handed capture of both men while they were armed (Congressional Medal of Honor Society, https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/jesse-t-barrick).

His courage was noticed during the campaign, but the formal decoration came decades later. He continued in service and received a commission in July 1864 as second lieutenant in Company G, 57th United States Colored Infantry. He left the Army that October because of disability. The National Cemetery Administration independently confirms this officer service and final rank.

Barrick and Sarah returned to Minnesota and raised their family. He later worked in the fur trade and gradually moved west, settling at Suquamish, Washington, in 1909 and subsequently at Pasco. The Medal of Honor was finally issued on 3 March 1917, when he was in his seventies.

He died at Pasco on 3 November 1923. Initially buried there in an unmarked grave, he was reinterred with military honours at Tahoma National Cemetery in February 2000 after local veterans researched his history and located his remains. His grave is in section 8, site 108. The later ceremony restored recognition to a man whose wartime service had included both a hazardous individual capture and responsibility as an officer of United States Colored Troops.