American soldier, born in Middletown, CT, on the 17th of December 1740. He entered the American army at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, became a major, and in 1777 a colonel. In that year, at the head of 170 men, he attacked the British troops at Sag Harbor, Long Island, captured 90 prisoners and destroyed 12 vessels without the loss of a man. In 1801 he was appointed Indian agent of the Cherokees, and lived among them till his death at the Cherokee Agency, GA, on the 23rd of January 1823. He was one of the earliest settlers in Ohio, removing there in 1788.
His son, Return Jonathan, Jr., was born in Middletown, in November 1764. After graduating from Yale in 1785, he removed with his father to Ohio, and began the practice of law in Marietta in 1788, and in 1803–04 was chief justice of the state supreme court. In 1807 he was appointed judge of the United States district court of Michigan, and in 1809–10 was a United States Senator from Ohio. From 1810 to 1814 he was governor of his state. He then became Postmaster-General in President Madison’s Cabinet, and continued to hold the office until 1823, when he retired to Marietta to pass the remainder of his life, and died there, on the 29th of March 1825.
Charles Delucena Meigs, great-grandson of the first Return Jonathan; born in St. George, Bermuda, on the 19th of February 1792. He began the practice of medicine in Augusta, GA, but in 1814 went to Philadelphia, and received the degree of M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1817. From 1841 to 1861 he was professor of obstetrics and the diseases of women and children in Jefferson Medical College. He published several works in his department of medicine. He died on the 22nd of June 1869, in Delaware County, PA.
His son, Montgomery Cunningham Meigs, was born in Augusta, GA, on the 3rd of May 1816; graduated at the United States Military Academy in 1836, and was appointed to the artillery, but transferred the following year to the engineer corps. For many years he was occupied in the engineering service on the sea-coast and in the construction of the government works at Washington, DC, and elsewhere. On May 14, 1861, he was promoted colonel of the Eleventh Infantry, and the following day was made quartermaster-general of the United States army, with the rank of brigadier-general. This post he held until his retirement from active service in November 1882. During the whole of the war General Meigs was engaged in directing the equipment and supplies of the armies in the field. He received the brevet of major-general, July 5, 1864. In 1876 he was a member of the commission for the reorganization of the army, and after his retirement in 1882 served as architect of the Pension Bureau Building at Washington, which was completed in 1887. He was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He died in Washington, DC, on the 2nd of January 1892.
