Remembering Coronado Civil War Veteran and Buffalo Soldier, Amos Hudgins
Amos Hudgins, African American Veteran of the Civil War (1863-65), Buffalo Soldier with US Army's 10th Cavalry (1867-72), and San Diego and Coronado resident (1887-1926)
Amos Hudgins, traveled across the state of Missouri to join the 2nd Kansas Colored Regiment at age 18. He fought in the historic Battle of Jenkin’s Ferry and was stationed in Arkansas until the end of the Civil War, despite sustaining a gunshot injury to his leg. He later served five years as an original “Buffalo Soldier” with the 10th Cavalry of the US Army from 1867-1872.
He married Annie Renfrow in 1874 in Missouri and they moved to Topeka, Kansas. While she remained in Topeka to run a millinery store, he worked with the 7th US Cavalry as a civilian guide/scout and survived the Battle of Little Big Horn. He eventually hung up his saddle and settled permanently in Topeka around 1879-1880 and worked as a barber while Annie ran a beauty salon. Amos and Annie moved to San Diego in 1887, eventually settling in the Logan Heights area. He quickly established himself as a barber to the wealthy and powerful in San Diego. Son Algernon was born in 1891. In 1896 he traveled to the Yukon to participate in the Klondike Gold Rush.
The Hudgins family moved to Coronado in 1903 . In 1906, Amos was crippled by an accident while building the granite seawall on Ocean Blvd. One of the large granite seawall stones fell off a wagon and crushed him. He spent the next 17 years working for the San Diego and Arizona Company as a night watchman at their warehouse at the Ferry Landing until 1923. He died in 1926.
Emancipation and the Recruitment of African American Troops
“Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on the earth or under the earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”
— Frederick Douglass, April 6, 1863
On New Years Day, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves free in the southern states of the Confederacy (while also keeping slavery intact in the “border states” that remained in the Union). The proclamation set in motion the active recruitment efforts to form Colored regiments within the Union Army among free African American men in the North and enslaved African American men from the Confederate South. In May of 1863 the United States War Department issued General Order 143, which established the Bureau of Colored Troops to legally facilitate the recruitment of African-American soldiers to fight for the Union Army.
The origins of the 180,000 soldiers in the United States Colored Troops (USCT)
In 1860, there were 4,440,000 African American men, women and children in the United States. Of that total 3,950,000 were enslaved in the slave-owning southern states of the Union. There were 490,000 “free colored persons” in the United States, with 240,000 residing in the north and 250,000 living in the slave-owning south.
There was an estimated 800,000 African American men of “fighting age” in 1860 in the United States. Approximately 710,000 of these men were enslaved in the south, while there were 90,000 men of fighting age who were “free colored persons.”
It is critical for us to appreciate just how dangerous and difficult it must have been for any enslaved person to escape and join the Union forces in 1863. Slave patrols were everywhere, public gatherings were restricted, and the distance to a mustering location for Union Troops far out of reach. To better understand the brutal efficiency of the systematic control the enslaved in 1860, consider this data from the Introduction to the 1860 Census Report on the rate of escaped slaves across the country:
“…during the Census year ending June 1, 1860, out of 3,949,557 slaves, there escaped only 803, being one to about 5,000 or at a rate of 1/50th of one per cent.”
Despite the many physical risks and the geographic barriers in place, nearly 180,000 African American men succeeded to join the United States Colored Troops between 1863 and 1865, with another 20,000 enlisting in the Navy. In the north, where there were an estimated 44,000 “free colored men” of fighting age, 38,500 men joined the USCT, an incredible 88% volunteer rate. It was far more challenging, however, for enslaved men in the South to escape and join the Union effort. Despite these risks, nearly 135,000 men joined from the South, with a huge number of these men coming from the “border states” of Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland. Another 6,000 men joined the effort without declaring a place of origin.
The mortality rate among these brave men was devastating; nearly 40,000 lost their lives in the war. Of those who died, roughly 10,000 died in combat while a staggering 30,000 died from diseases (which were rampant in the cramped unhygienic camps of the Civil War, particularly for the USCT).
More than 20 percent of the nearly 200,000 African American men of the United States Colored Troops and Navy died in less than two years of service in the Civil War, a rate higher than their white peers in the Union Army. This rate remains the highest wartime death rate among a defined segment of United States troops in US history, an extraordinary sacrifice in the struggle for freedom and equality for all Americans.
During the American Revolution, 23,800 men of the Continental Army and Colonial militias perished over an eight year period, with a death rate of 6.3% among those that served.
One of these incredible men of the United States Colored Troops was Amos E. Hudgins, a Coronado resident from 1903 until his death in 1926. His wife and son, granddaughter, and great-grandson all made Coronado home over the next 110 years.
Amos Hudgins
Early Life - Livingston and Ray Counties, Missouri (1845-1863)
Evidence suggests that Amos Hudgins was born enslaved near the town of Mooresville in Livingston County, Missouri in 1844 to Mahala Hudgins. There is no civil record of Amos or Mahala by first name anywhere in Missouri until after the Civil War, due to their enslavement. The free (white) population of Livingston County in 1850 was 4,247 with a total of 308 African Americans enslaved in the County. The Slave Schedules of 1850 (conducted in tandem with the US Census of 1850) for Livingston County shows a William Hudgins owning five slaves, among them a 28 year old woman (which corresponds roughly to Mahala Hudgins’s age), and a 6 year old Mulatto boy (corresponding to Amos’s approximate age).
The term Mulatto was commonly used in the United States Census from 1850-1890 and again in 1910-1920 to identify a person who is has both white and black parentage. The below table is an excerpt from the Introduction of the United States Census of 1860 and demonstrates the prevalence of Mulatto African Americans amongst the free and enslaved populations in the United States:
Amos’s mother, Mahala Hudgins was racially categorized as Mulatto in the US Census data from 1870-1900. Her granddaughter mentioned in her oral history that Mahala may have been Cherokee or part-Cherokee, but the Census data does not confirm that speculation, though it remains possible, as the Cherokee tribe owned slaves of African ancestry.
It appears likely that the Amos and Mahala moved with owner William Hudgins to the nearby Missouri County of Ray, in the city of Richmond at some point in the 1850s. In 1860, William Hudgins is listed in Richmond as owning a 40 year old Mulatto female slave and a 14 year old Black male slave, which could be Amos (the racial categories and ages were not always accurate).
Amos would escape across Missouri to the free state of Kansas in the summer of 1863 and join the 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment. Mahala Hudgins remained in Richmond, and would later marry local African American blacksmith and Union war veteran Jacob Brigman in Richmond in March of 1865.
Civil War Military Service - 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment, 83rd United States Colored Troops Infantry Regiment
At age 18, Amos made his way across the slave state of Missouri and into Kansas at great risk to enlist in the 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment at Elwood, Kansas in early September of 1863. The 2nd Kansas Colored were led by a young but war-seasoned 28 year old lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Crawford (who would remarkably become the Governor of Kansas two years later in 1865).
Amos’s 2nd Kansas Colored Regiment played a key role in The Battle of Jenkins Ferry, in Arkansas, on April 30th, 1864. This battle occurred during Brigadier General Frederick Steele’s ill-fated Camden Expedition, and was one of the few battles of the Camden Expedition considered a Union victory. It was also a battle that proved to Union brass the incredible discipline and fighting spirit of African American troops. In this battle, Colonel Crawford moved his 660 men of the 2nd Kansas Colored Regiment into the primary defensive position against a large scale attack by Confederate forces (while the bulk of Steele’s 8,000 men continued their retreat across a raging river on a pontoon bridge). The Kansas 2nd had motivation to take this responsibility, as 140 members of their fellow 1st Kansas Colored Regiment were executed by Confederate forces just twelve days earlier at the Battle of Poison Springs.
The Confederate Army had publicized that they would take no prisoners among colored troops, a clear violation of the rules of war at the time, and at Poison Springs they had made true on that promise in the killing of the surrendered troops of the 1st Kansas Colored Troops. “Remember Poison Springs!” shouted the 2nd Kansas as they fixed their bayonets in the final moments of their defense, and charged an artillery battery, capturing it and causing the larger Confederate force to retreat. All of Steele’s men crossed the bridge with the 2nd Kansas Colored being the last to cross. The symbolic importance of the Battle of Jenkins Ferry was memorialized in the brutal opening scene of the 2012 Steven Spielberg film Lincoln.
On December 13, 1864 the 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry was renamed the 83rd U.S. Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.). Operating under that designation, the regiment was assigned garrison duty for military outposts in Union-occupied areas of Arkansas for the remainder of the war. The regiment was disbanded on October 9th, 1865 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and discharged to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on November 27, 1865.
According to the oral history of Amos Hudgins’s granddaughter, the journey back from Arkansas to Kansas and then back home to Missouri was rough:
“After the war he went back to Kansas. Starving. Ragged. Barefoot. They ate the mules’ food, and then ate the mules. Amos was wounded by a mini ball in the left knee.”
—Cynthia Ann Hudgins
Amos Hudgins’ Pension Card confirms him as a member of the 2nd Kansas Colored Second Infantry, and as a member of the 83rd US Colored Troops. The record also shows that Amos was a pioneering member of the 10th Calvary of the US Army, better known as the Buffalo Soldiers, where he served 5 years from 1867-1872. There is no record of his later service to the 7th Calvary of Major Marcus Reno (senior officer of Lt. Col. George Custer) in the late 1870s, indicating he was likely serving as a scout or guide during that period.
All of the regimental documents of the 2nd Kansas Colored Regiment were destroyed in the 2nd Kansas’s epic battle at Jenkin’s Ferry, but there is a record from his service to the 10th Calvary that confirms Amos’s place of birth as Livingston County, Missouri, further affirming that he was very likely the 6 year old mulatto boy enslaved by William Hudgins in Livingston County.
Amos likely spent about a year in post-Civil War Richmond, Missouri with his mother Mahala and new father in-law Jacob Brigman. In 1867 he joined the 10th Calvary Regiment of the US Army, known as the Buffalo Soldiers.
Military Service, 10th Calvary of the US Army, Buffalo Soldiers (1867-72)
In 1867, Amos rejoined the US Army by signing with the 10th Cavalry, which was formed in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Formed as a segregated African-American unit, the 10th Cavalry along with the 9th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry regiments, comprised the original “Buffalo Soldier” regiments in the post–Civil War Regular Army.
African American men have fought in every American war, yet the Buffalo Soldiers, two cavalry and four infantry regiments, have a unique place in history and memory. They helped the United States become a vast continental nation and ultimately a world power. Facing discrimination in the Army and in the towns where they were stationed, Buffalo Soldiers persevered to be a credit to their people and the nation.
— The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture
Amos Hudgins completed his 5 year term with the 10th Cavalry at the rank of Sergeant. He was under the able command of legendary Colonel Benjamin Grierson, who was renowned for his undying loyalty towards the soldiers of the 10th and commanded the 10th Cavalry for three decades. The 10th Cavalry Regiment participated in protecting and defending the United States westward expansion and were involved in the many skirmishes and the larger battles of the Indian Wars.
Annie, Topeka and the 7th Cavalry (1874-1887)
Amos mustered out of service with the Buffalo Soldiers in 1872 and moved to Topeka, Kansas. In 1874, at age 28, he married 18 year old Annie Renfrow in Richmond, Missouri. Annie was born enslaved to an Englishman and an unknown enslaved woman in Maysville, Kentucky in 1856. Her granddaughter Cynthia described her this way, “Grandma Cynthia’s father was English— her mother was perhaps mulatto as well. Grandma Cynthia was light brown and did not have Negro features.”
In the late 1870s, Annie lived in Topeka and ran a millinery store (hat shop) while Amos worked as a non-enlisted civilian guide for Major Marcus Reno’s 7th Calvary. Amos was likely present at the Battle of Little Big Horn, and fortunate to survive (along with Major Reno and his most of Reno’s men).
In the early 1880s Amos remained in Topeka, where both he and Annie ran successful businesses. Amos owned a fancy barber shop, while Annie owned a ladies hair salon. They appeared in the local Business directory of Topeka and regularly advertised in the Topeka newspapers:
Amos was also deeply involved in the Lincoln chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic club in Topeka, a club that was immensely important in marking and remembering the sacrifices of the Union veterans of the Civil War. He is listed in the Topeka newspaper as traveling to Minneapolis for the G.A.R. convention on behalf of the Topeka chapter.
In the Census of 1880, the Hudgins family were listed as having a daughter Ida, who was born in Nebraska in 1868. There is no further record of Ida nor mention of Ida by Annie or Amos after 1880.
A highlight of this period must have been the visit to Topeka of Amos’s mother Mahala Brigman in 1883, an event that was glowingly covered in the local newspaper, and also revealed the esteem in which Amos and Annie were held in the Topeka community:
San Diego (1887-1904)
The 1880 census listed 55 African Americans living in San Diego County, of which 33 resided in the small mountain town of Julian. By 1890, the African American population rose to 289 in San Diego County, predominantly living in the downtown and Logan Heights areas.
Amos and Annie arrived in San Diego in 1887, having traveled overland from Kansas with Amos’s team of horses and wagon (one would imagine that a fellow of Amos’s experience could handle any situation that might arise on such a journey).
Annie and Amos tried their hand at homesteading in the El Cajon Valley for several years but later moved to the city as a result of Amos’s crippled leg troubling him. They lived on Julian Ave in the Logan Heights neighborhood. Amos returned to his profession as a barber in the Gaslamp area and was extremely popular, cutting the hair of San Diego luminaries such as Alonzo Horton at the time.
In 1891, their son Algernon (“Algie”) was born. The photo below is of the Hudgins family in front of their home on Julian Street in Logan Heights around 1897, based on the apparent age of Algie in the photo:
In 1896, Amos is reported to have traveled to the Yukon region to participate in the Klondike Gold Rush and returned with a few gold nuggets, but certainly not with the riches he had hoped to find.
In 1903 Amos was among the founding members of the Prince Hall Black Freemason Lodge known as Fidelity Lodge #10, also based in Logan Heights. It was the city’s first social and philanthropic club for middle class African American men. Other founding members of this important club were Coronado residents Edmund Marshall (and his sons Richmond and William), as well as entrepreneur Gus Thompson.
Coronado (1903-1926)
Amos moved the family to Coronado in 1903, where the rented a home on the corner of F Ave and Seventh St. In 1908, he purchased a lot on B Ave and built a home for the family at 845 B Ave. Algie attended the Coronado schools for a brief time, but had to quit school at age 15 when Amos suffered a crippling injury working on the granite seawall along Ocean Blvd.
Algie was an extremely bright and active young man. In addition to working as a teenager at the Bowling Alley at Tent City, he was also a pioneer in Ham radio, a skill that he would put to use in the Navy during WWI. He operated his radio from a “radio shack” in the back of the house on B Ave.
In 1905, the Coronado City Director listed Amos as a laborer. In 1906 he was employed as a “hostler” by the Coronado Beach Company to help build the Ocean Blvd Granite Seawall. Tragically, one of the large granite stones fell off one of the wagons and crushed Amos, seriously crippling him for the rest of his life. He spent the next seventeen years working as a night watchman for the San Diego and Arizona Company at the Ferry Landing, where the company had a large warehouse. Amos was often seen wearing his original Buffalo Soldier fur hat while around town and while on duty.
In Amos’s son Algernon, followed in his father’s footsteps and volunteered for military service in WWI, serving in the California Naval Militia which was later called the National Naval Volunteers. He completed his two years of service “passing” as White. As a result of his experience and expertise in amateur radio, he served as a Chief Radio Electrician. While on furlough in Glasgow, Scotland, handsome young Algernon met May Angus, a young woman he met on the street strolling with her sister. Several years later, she bravely traveled alone to the United States to marry Algernon (in Kansas City, as part of the Travelers Aid requirements), and immediately traveled back to Coronado.
May did not fully understand the extent of racial prejudice she would observe and encounter in the US at the time, having been born raised in Scotland. Upon her arrival in Coronado, according to her daughter Cynthia, “the first time she went out on the streets… was being stopped on the street. They said her, ‘Why did a nice white girl like you marry into that nigger family!’” May gave birth a few years later to daughter Cynthia in 1921 in Amos and Annie’s house at 845 B Avenue. When May and Algie moved into their own place a few years later, May declined to raise Cynthia in their new home, leaving Cynthia to be raised by her grandparents, Amos and Annie. Amos helped raise Cynthia for 4 years before his death in 1926.
Amos is buried in the Grand Army of the Republic section of Mount Hope Cemetery, reserved for Civil War Veterans. The headstone of fellow African American Coronado veteran Edmund Marshall is steps away. Unfortunately, Amos’s headstone marker contains an error, as it lists him as a member of the 2nd Kansas Infantry (a white regiment that mustered in 1861, rather than the 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry).
The original headstone request document from the Archives (below) is marked up as incorrect but the headstone was still issued as requested.
The Hudgins family 1926-1950
Grandmother Annie Hudgins continued caring for Cynthia for another 8 years until her own tragic death in 1934. Annie was struck by an unlicensed teenage driver in Coronado while crossing the street in front of the Christ Episcopal Church.
Due to her race she was taken to a hospital in San Diego rather than the Coronado Hospital. However, due to her failing condition, she was eventually allowed to be transferred to the hospital in Coronado, according to granddaughter Cynthia. However, rather than being treated in the general ward, Cynthia said. “..they put her in a little room that was kind of — it had been a storage room, I guess. It was discrimination, because I wasn’t allowed to come through the front of the hospital. I had to go back down the side and go in that door.” Annie passed several months after the accident, with Cynthia by her side. The boy was never charged for the accident.
After her grandmother’s death in 1934, at age 12, Cynthia moved in with her parents Algernon and May. She later graduated from Coronado High School in 1939.
In the Census of 1940, Amos A (Algernon) and daughter Cynthia are listed as “negro” and May as White.
Three years later on May 5, 1943, California would pass an anti-miscegation law, banning interracial marriage. California had previously banned interracial marriage upon statehood between White and Black people in 1850. Under the law passed that year (1850), “all marriages of whites with negroes or mulattoes are declared to be null and void.” Any interracial couple who defied the new 1943 statute, or any clerk who provided a marriage license to an interracial couple, faced a fine of up to $10,000 or up to 10 years in prison.
The California Supreme Court struck down both the 1943 statute requiring race on marriage licenses and the state's much older ban on interracial marriage on October 1, 1948 in the case of Perez v. Sharp.
May Hudgins passed away in Coronado at the age 48 in 1948. Algernon Hudgins passed away in 1973 at the age 81.
In the Census of 1950, both Algernon and Cynthia are listed in the Census as white.
Much of the inspiration and information for this story came from the oral history told by Cynthia May Hudgins, daughter to May and Algernon, granddaughter to Amos and Annie, to the San Diego Reader in 2005. Cynthia passed in 2015, at the age of 93.
Cynthia Hudgins’ memoir, The Other Side of the Fence: Life on Both Sides of the Color Line, chronicles her life growing up in Depression-era Coronado and her struggles grappling with her racial identify later in her life.
Kevin Ashley, Coronado, April 2022