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Adelbert Ames (October 31, 1835 - April 13, 1933) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1861, just days after the Battle of Fort Sumter.
As a First Lieutenant, Ames was commanding his artillery battery during the First Battle of Bull Run when
he was seriously wounded in the thigh. He issued orders until he was unable to continue, refusing to leave the guns
and soldiers under his command. For his actions that day, he received a brevet promotion to major and, in 1893, was awarded
the Medal of Honor for his heroism. The citation read that Ames:
" ... remained upon the field in command of a section of Griffin's Battery, directing its fire after being severely
wounded and refusing to leave the field until too weak to sit upon the caisson where he had been placed by men
of his command."
In addition to Bull Run, Ames' contributions to the Union Army during the Civil War included particpation in
the Peninsula Campaign, and battles at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. After the Civil War,
Ames was appointed by Congress to be provisional Governor of Mississippi (1868). The Mississippi Legislature elected
Ames to the U.S. Senate after the readmission of Mississippi to the Union. He served from February 24, 1870 to January 10, 1874.
In 1870, while serving as Senator, Ames met and married Blanche Butler, daughter of his former commander, and now U.S. Representative,
Benjamin Butler.
In 1898, Ames was appointed brigadier general of volunteers in the Spanish-American War and fought in Cuba. He died in
1933 at the age of 97 in his winter home located in Ormond Beach, Florida, next to the estate
of his friend John D. Rockefeller. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving general who had served in
the Civil War.
The final resting place of Adelbert Ames can be found in the Hildredth Cemetery on Hildreth Street in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Note that Ames' grave is found inside the locked and gated section of the cemetery known as the Hildreth Family Cemetery.
His grave site can be viewed from approximately 100 feet away behind the fence which separates the public and private portions
of the cemetery, behind the grave site of Ames' famous father-in-law Benjamin Franklin Butler.
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