Thomas Ward Custer

Captain Thomas Ward Custer: America’s First Double Medal of Honor Recipient

Thomas Ward Custer did not receive the Medal of Honor once. He earned it twice in four days.

During the final pursuit of Robert E. Lee’s army in April 1865, the twenty year old cavalry officer repeatedly charged into collapsing Confederate formations to seize their battle flags. At Namozine Church, he captured an enemy color. At Sailor’s Creek, he leaped his horse over Confederate defenses, seized two more stands of colors, lost his horse beneath him and suffered a severe facial wound. Those actions made Thomas Custer the first person in American military history to receive two Medals of Honor.

Thomas Ward Custer was born on 15 March 1845 in New Rumley, Ohio. He was more than five years younger than his famous brother, George Armstrong Custer, but he entered military life at an even younger age. On 2 September 1861, Tom enlisted in the Union Army at sixteen, two years below the official age requirement. He initially served with the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry and participated in the Battle of Stones River before performing escort duty for senior commanders, including Generals Ulysses S. Grant and George H. Thomas.

Custer reenlisted and received a commission as second lieutenant in Company B, 6th Michigan Cavalry, on 23 October 1864. He then joined the staff of his brother George as an aide-de-camp. The appointment placed him inside one of the most aggressive cavalry commands in the Union Army just as the Civil War entered its final and most decisive stage.

His first Medal of Honor action came at Namozine Church in Virginia during the Appomattox Campaign. Modern official records differ by one day on the date. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society records 2 April 1865, while the National Park Service uses 3 April. Both agree that Custer captured a Confederate flag during the engagement. His first official citation was remarkably brief:

“Capture of flag on 2 April 1865.”

The medal was presented to him on 24 April 1865. Like many Civil War Medal of Honor citations, the surviving wording says little about the confusion, speed and personal danger involved in taking a regimental color from an enemy formation.

Battle flags were not merely pieces of cloth. They marked a unit’s position amid smoke and noise, served as rallying points and embodied the regiment’s honor. Colors were normally surrounded by men determined to defend them. Capturing one required a soldier to break into the enemy formation, overcome its guard and survive long enough to carry the flag away.

Only days after Namozine Church, Custer performed an even more dangerous act at Sailor’s Creek on 6 April 1865. He drove his horse over the Confederate works and captured two stands of colors. His horse was shot from beneath him, and Custer received a severe wound. The central wording of his second Medal of Honor citation states that he:

“leaped his horse over the enemy’s works and captured two stands of colors.”

His second Medal of Honor was presented on 22 May 1865. The two awards recognized separate acts of gallantry, which is why his reconstructed ribbon rack correctly displays two individual Medal of Honor ribbons rather than one ribbon with a device.

Sailor’s Creek was one of the final disasters suffered by Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Confederate formations were cut off, surrounded and forced to surrender in large numbers. Three days later, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Custer had entered the war as an underage private and emerged from it as a commissioned cavalry officer, a double Medal of Honor recipient and a veteran still only twenty years old.

After the Civil War, Custer accompanied his brother’s command to Texas, where Union forces performed occupation duties and monitored French involvement in Mexico. He was mustered out of volunteer service on 24 April 1866, but chose to remain in the Army. After a brief appointment in the 1st Cavalry, he accepted a commission as first lieutenant in the newly formed 7th United States Cavalry.

Custer’s postwar service carried him into the conflicts between the United States and the Indigenous nations of the Great Plains. These campaigns were connected to federal expansion, railroad construction, settlement and efforts to confine Native peoples to reservations. In 1867, he served during Major General Winfield Scott Hancock’s campaign against the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota. At the Washita River on 27 November 1868, he received a minor wound in his right hand during the 7th Cavalry’s attack on Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne village.

In 1873, Custer participated in the Yellowstone Expedition, where the 7th Cavalry fought Lakota warriors while protecting a railroad survey through contested territory. The following year, he joined the Black Hills Expedition, whose confirmation of gold encouraged a rush of miners into lands guaranteed to the Lakota under treaty. These events contributed directly to the Great Sioux War of 1876.

Custer also became associated with the arrest of the Lakota warrior Rain-in-the-Face at Standing Rock Agency in December 1874. Leading soldiers into the agency store, Custer seized and disarmed him before escorting him through a hostile crowd to confinement at Fort Abraham Lincoln. Rain-in-the-Face later escaped, and stories of a personal feud between the two men became part of the mythology surrounding the Custer family and the Little Bighorn.

On 2 December 1875, Thomas Custer was promoted to captain in the 7th Cavalry and assigned command of Company C. During the 1876 campaign, however, he served on his brother’s staff as aide-de-camp. On 25 June, the 7th Cavalry attacked a large Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho village beside the Little Bighorn River. The Native warriors rapidly counterattacked and destroyed the portion of the regiment accompanying George Custer.

Thomas Custer died near his brother on what became known as Last Stand Hill. He was thirty-one years old. His remains were initially buried on the battlefield before being exhumed in July 1877 and reinterred at Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas.

His modern reconstructed entitlement also includes the Civil War Campaign Medal and Indian Campaign Medal. Neither carried an individual gallantry citation. They recognized qualifying service in the two major periods of his military career. Both medals were established by the War Department in 1907, more than thirty years after Custer’s death, so they represent retrospective recognition rather than decorations he personally wore during his lifetime.

Thomas Ward Custer has often been remembered simply as the younger brother who died beside George Armstrong Custer. His own record deserves a separate place in American military history. He entered the Army as an underage volunteer, rose from private to officer and received the nation’s highest military decoration twice before reaching his twenty-first birthday.

At Namozine Church, he captured a flag. At Sailor’s Creek, he crossed the enemy defenses, lost his horse, suffered a severe wound and captured two more colors. Thomas Custer’s life ended at the Little Bighorn, but his defining legacy had already been secured eleven years earlier, during four extraordinary days of courage at the close of the American Civil War.