Frederick Bartlett Doten was born on December 9, 1841, in Sheffield, Massachusetts, to Bartlett and Augusta Doten. His father was a merchant who owned $2,500 of real estate and $4,000 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Sheffield until the 1850s, when they moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. By 1860, he was working as a clerk.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on August 1, 1862, and he mustered in as a corporal in Company A of the 14^th Connecticut Infantry on August 20. The regiment took part in the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, and the Battle of Chancellorsville.

 

He was promoted to 2^nd lieutenant on March 3, 1863, then to 1^st lieutenant on April 14, 1863, and finally to captain on October 20, 1863. Confederate forces captured him near Morton’s Ford, Virginia, on February 6, 1864, and he spent the following month imprisoned at Macon, Georgia. He was paroled on March 15, 1864, and he mustered out on May 1, 1865.

 

He courted Georgiana Wells during the war. In October 1864, he wrote that he “dreamed I was with you and I was very happy darling. You have been out of my thoughts hardly a moment during all these days of honor and danger, and my greatest anxiety was for you darling.” In March 1865, he wrote that he “long[ed] to be with you, to be petted and kissed and loved by my own Pet. What a contrast that would be to the stern hard life here.”

 

He returned to Massachusetts after the war, and he married Georgiana on October 1, 1866. They had at least two children: Jerome, born around 1870; and Florence, born around 1875. They lived in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and Doten worked as a bank cashier. By 1880, he employed at least one white servant. Two decades later, he employed two servants. He died in Chicopee on April 9, 1903.

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