Henry C. Baldwin was born around 1843 in Connecticut to Lucius and Maria Baldwin. His father was a farmer who owned $2,000 of real estate and $300 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and by 1860, he was working as a laborer. Baldwin enlisted in the Union army on August 6, 1862, and he mustered in as a corporal in Company H of the 15^th Connecticut Infantry on August 25. The regiment took part in the Battle of Fredericksburg. He remained devoted to the Union, and in February 1863, he insisted that “the starry Flag will yet wave in triumph ore a united and happy Country.” He appeared indifferent to Black freedom and military service, writing that he did not “care how many Negroes he [General Benjamin Butler] arms or how many get their heads broak if it will help to end the war.” He was promoted to sergeant on January 1, 1865. Confederate forces captured him on March 8, 1865, and he was paroled on March 26. He mustered out on June 27, 1865.

 

He returned to Naugatuck after the war, and by 1870, he was working as a farmer. He earned a law degree from Yale College in 1872 and began working as a lawyer in Naugatuck. He was a strong supporter of the Democratic Party until 1874, when he joined the Greenback Party. According to one writer, he “gained most prominence as an advocate of the labor party, as a greenbacker, and later as a free silverite.” He married a woman named Millicent in the 1870s, and they had at least three children: May, born around 1877; June, born around 1879; and Seth, born around 1880. He supported Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan in the election of 1896, according to one writer, Baldwin’s “health was broken by overwork in the recent [presidential] campaign.” He died of “nervous prostration” in Naugatuck on January 15, 1897.

SOURCES