Battles of Manassas • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments • The Armies
The Colonel Thomas marker is at the Henry Hill Visitor Center of Manassas National Battlefield Park.
Text from the marker:
Colonel Thomas
of Johnston’s staff
was killed here July 21, 1861.
Battle of First Manassas
(Bull Run)
Colonel Francis J. Thomas was born in Virginia in 1824. He graduated from the West Point Class of 1844, having been appointed from Maryland. He was assigned to the 3rd United States Artillery and was stationed at Fort McHenry, Maryland and Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. During the Mexican War he fought at Monterey and Mexico City. He then served on frontier duty in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Thomas left the army in 1852 and became Chief Engineer of the Montevue Railroad in Piedmont, Virginia in 1854. He also served as Superintendent of a mining company in Pennsylvania and a coal mine in Clarksburg, Virginia. In 1859 he moved to Baltimore, where he was a merchant.
When the outbreak of the Civil War Thomas recruited Marylanders for the Confederacy. He was appointed Colonel of the First Maryland Regiment at Harpers Ferry but opposition from company commanders caused him to be replaced on June 8, 1861 by Colonel Arnold Elzey. Thomas was then appointed Chief of Ordnance for the Army of the Shenandoah on General Joseph E. Johnston’s staff.
Thomas’ son was born just before the Battle of Manassas on July 14, 1861. Thomas was able to see him two days later.
During the battle Johnston gave Thomas command of a large body of stragglers. Thomas was mortally wounded leading them back into the fight. He was helped from his horse by Lieutenant “Sandy” Pendleton, but died shortly after.
Location of the marker
The Colonel Thomas marker is about 50 yards east of the parking lot of the Henry Hill Visitor Center.