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Sandwich’s First Company – April 1861

Drawing restored by Herk Schmidt

Captain, Company H, 10th Illinois Infantry. Mexican War veteran who raised Sandwich’s first Civil War company in April 1861 and was killed in action at New Madrid, Missouri, March 12, 1862.

A Mexican War veteran and early Sandwich merchant, Captain Lindsay H. Carr organized the first company of Union volunteers raised in Sandwich following President Lincoln’s call for troops in April 1861.

At a public meeting held just days after Fort Sumter fell, Carr stepped forward, placed his name at the top of an enlistment paper, and invited others to join him. Many local men followed his example. He was elected captain of the company, and on April 23, 1861, the men of Sandwich departed for service.

Carr was mustered into the 10th Illinois Infantry and soon saw action in Missouri. On March 12, 1862, while posting pickets near New Madrid, Missouri, he was shot and killed in action. Reports state he was struck once in the head and once in the chest. He was forty years old.

An obituary described him as “a true soldier every inch of him.”

Captain Carr’s death marked one of Sandwich’s earliest battlefield losses in the Civil War and stands as a testament to the town’s early and immediate response to the Union cause.