Luman L. Cadwell

He swam through enemy fire to bring back a boat for his men.

Luman Lewis Cadwell was born at Nanticoke Springs, Broome County, New York, on 22 May 1836. His parents were Nathan and Eliza Cadwell. The family moved to Wisconsin in 1855 and farmed near Melrose. When the Civil War began, he returned to New York to enlist among people he knew, entering Company B of the 2nd New York Veteran Cavalry.

Cadwell served as a sergeant during operations in Louisiana. On 20 September 1864, his command reached Alabama Bayou and needed a means of crossing the water to reach the Confederate force beyond it. The task required someone to enter the bayou while exposed to enemy fire.

He volunteered and swam across. The Medal of Honor citation records that he “captured and brought off a boat” that enabled the command to cross and defeat its opponents. The act recognized was therefore a practical contribution to the whole unit’s movement: obtaining a boat where the water had blocked the advance, despite fire from the opposite side.

He survived the war, having been wounded during his service, and left the Army in 1865 with the rank of first lieutenant.

His postwar life took him to Decorah, Iowa. There he lived with his family and held several civilian occupations. He worked for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St Paul Railroad, was associated with Citizens’ Savings Bank and operated the Decorah Greenhouse. Local property records also identify a Gothic Revival home built for Luman and Anna Cadwell in 1876, placing them firmly within the town’s developing residential community.

Cadwell’s Medal of Honor was awarded on 17 August 1894, almost thirty years after the action. By then he had spent far longer in civilian work than in wartime service. His later reputation in Decorah combined the decorated veteran with the railway employee, businessman and greenhouse operator familiar to his neighbours.

He died in Decorah in July 1925, aged eighty-nine, and was buried in Phelps Cemetery. The span from a New York childhood through Wisconsin farming, Louisiana service and Iowa business gives a fuller outline of his life than the brief citation alone.