The 1st Michigan Colored Infantry (102nd USCT): History and How to Research a Soldier

Michigan’s only regiment of Black Civil War soldiers

Michigan raised 30 white infantry regiments during the Civil War and exactly one Black one. It began as the 1st Michigan Colored Infantry, sometimes called the First Michigan Colored Regiment in period sources, formed in Detroit over the fall and winter of 1863–64. It finished the war as the 102nd United States Colored Troops, part of the Union Army’s broader United States Colored Troops system. If you’re researching a Black ancestor who served from Michigan, this is almost certainly his regiment. There wasn’t another option in the state.

The push to create it came from outside the War Department. Henry Barns, editor of the Detroit Tribune and Advertiser, ran an editorial and letter-writing campaign arguing that Michigan’s Black citizens deserved the chance to fight. Governor Austin Blair backed the idea, but authorization had to come from Washington, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton granted it on July 24, 1863, in an order that was blunt about the terms: no bounty, ten dollars a month with one ration a day, three dollars of that pay deducted for clothing, and white officers in command. Recruiting opened formally on August 12, 1863.

Training happened at Camp Ward, a site in what was then the southeastern part of Detroit, near where Duffield Elementary School stands today. Some men began drilling before the regiment had official federal approval. The unit mustered into United States service on February 17, 1864, with 895 men on its roll — Barns himself was commissioned its first colonel for his organizing work, later stepping down in favor of Henry L. Chipman, with Newcomb Clark serving as his deputy.

Who served, and where they came from

According to the Detroit Historical Society, the regiment’s first wave (845 men, composed entirely of volunteers) came from Detroit, from southern Michigan more broadly, and from Upper Canada, today’s Ontario. Over the regiment’s full run of service, roughly 1,400 to 1,446 Black men enlisted in it in total. Sources differ slightly on the exact final count, which isn’t unusual for a unit that took recruits over many months. What’s clear from every account is the makeup of that group: about 1,000 of them had been born in slave states, meaning a majority of the regiment’s soldiers had lived as enslaved people before making their way, one way or another, to freedom and to Michigan. Seventy-two of the earliest volunteers came directly from Canada, where their freedom was legally secure; many had reached it via the Underground Railroad. For these men in particular, enlisting meant stepping back across the border into a country that had enslaved them, in some cases to fight for family members who might still be enslaved themselves. That’s not a small detail to leave out of a family history.

From Detroit to the Carolina coast

The regiment left Detroit on March 28, 1864, and joined the 9th Army Corps at Annapolis, Maryland. By April 15 it was ordered to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where it went on picket and outpost duty and garrisoned Port Royal until mid-June. On May 23, 1864, the War Department formally redesignated the unit as the 102nd Regiment, United States Colored Troops — the name it carried for the rest of the war.

The regiment’s first taste of combat came near Baldwin, Florida, in mid-August 1864, when Confederate cavalry attacked its position; the men held and repulsed the attack, which their white officers cited afterward as proof the regiment could fight as capably as any other infantry. Through the fall and winter of 1864–65 the 102nd took part in the coastal campaigns around Beaufort and Charleston, including the engagement at Honey Hill on November 30 and fighting at Deveaux’s Neck along the Tulifinny River in early December. The regiment held Charleston Neck into March 1865, then moved to Savannah, Georgia, March 9–16, and on toward Georgetown, South Carolina, by month’s end.

In the war’s closing weeks the regiment marched with Potter’s Expedition from Georgetown toward Camden, fighting at Statesburg on April 15, Boykin’s Mills on April 18, and Dingle’s Mills and Singleton’s Plantation on April 19, 1865. On the 18th, near Manchester, the 102nd and the 54th Massachusetts flanked a Confederate position and drove it back in disorder toward Statesburg; the regiment held that ground until word arrived under a flag of truce that Generals Lee and Johnston had already surrendered. From there it marched back to Charleston by April 29, then on to Summerville, Branchville, and Orangeburg, where it held provost duty from late May until July 28, and finally to Winnsboro for the rest of the summer.

The regiment mustered out at Charleston on September 30, 1865, and its survivors sailed and rode home, arriving in Detroit on October 17 to be paid and formally disbanded. Losses were concentrated in disease rather than combat, as was true of most Civil War regiments — accounts of the unit’s Roll of Honor put combat deaths in the single digits, with well over a hundred more men lost to illness during the nineteen months the regiment was in the field, particularly during its first summer on the South Carolina Sea Islands.

How USCT research differs from researching a white Michigan regiment

The record types are largely the same (compiled service records, pension files, muster rolls), but what’s inside them, and how you should read them, is not.

Compiled military service records. The 102nd USCT’s service records were compiled by the War Department the same way any Union regiment’s were, from muster rolls, descriptive books, and other originals. Michigan’s own Adjutant General also included the regiment in its official state compilation, as Volume 46 of the Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War, 1861–1865. NARA microfilm publication M589 indexes the compiled service records of all USCT volunteers, and FamilySearch’s “United States Civil War Service Records of Union Colored Troops, 1863–1865” collection links directly to digitized images on Fold3.

Pension files carry unusual weight. For a formerly enslaved soldier, a pension application often had to establish facts that no legal document had ever recorded: a birth date, a marriage, even a name, since enslaved people frequently used different surnames before and after emancipation. Pension examiners responded by taking detailed sworn testimony from the veteran, from his widow, from people who had known the family under slavery, covering exactly the kind of life-history detail that doesn’t survive anywhere else. Historians researching slavery and emancipation now treat these depositions as source material in their own right, not just as pension paperwork. If your ancestor’s pension file runs to eighty or a hundred pages, that’s normal for a USCT file, and it’s worth reading in full rather than skimming for a service date.

Some CMSR jackets contain documents unique to USCT units. For regiments recruited directly in the border slave states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland), service record jackets sometimes include deeds of manumission, oaths of allegiance, proof-of-ownership statements, or bills of sale, filed because a man’s freedom itself needed to be established before he could legally enlist. The 1st Michigan Colored Infantry recruited mostly free men and escapees already in Michigan or Canada rather than men enlisting directly out of Southern slavery, so these particular documents are less common in this regiment’s jackets than in, say, a Kentucky USCT unit’s — but it’s worth checking for them regardless, since some Michigan recruits had only recently reached free soil.

Search platforms use “Colored Troops” as their own category. On Fold3, typing “Colored Troops” into the main search surfaces the USCT compiled service record collections directly; switching from Search to Browse mode lets you drill into the specific publication, then regiment, company, and surname range. Ancestry and FamilySearch organize their USCT holdings similarly, as a distinct set of collections rather than folded into general Civil War records.

Where to start

1. Confirm your ancestor’s company within the 102nd USCT (formerly 1st Michigan Colored Infantry) through the Michigan Adjutant General’s Volume 46 or a USCT-specific index on Fold3 or FamilySearch.
2. Pull the compiled military service record for enlistment, muster, and discharge details.
3. Search the pension index (T288/T289). The Organization Index specifically groups USCT files together. Request the full case file if one exists.
4. Read the pension file’s depositions in full; they’re frequently the richest surviving account of a formerly enslaved Michigander’s life before the war.
5. Cross-reference against Detroit-area cemetery and GAR records. Detroit’s Elmwood Cemetery, in particular, holds a number of 102nd USCT veterans and has published biographical research on them.

I’ve worked USCT files for other Michigan regiments’ Black recruits before, and the pension depositions are consistently the part that stops you cold — a widow describing, in her own words, the day she and her husband agreed they were married, with no minister and no license anywhere in sight.

Frequently asked questions

When was the 1st Michigan Colored Infantry organized, and who served in it? Secretary of War Edwin Stanton authorized Michigan to raise a regiment of Black infantry on July 24, 1863, after a public campaign led by Detroit Tribune and Advertiser editor Henry Barns. Recruiting formally began August 12, 1863, at Camp Ward in Detroit, and the regiment mustered into federal service on February 17, 1864, with 895 men on its rolls. Over its full existence roughly 1,400 men served in the regiment; about 1,000 of them had been born in slave states, and 72 of the earliest volunteers came from Canada, many having escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad.

When did the regiment become the 102nd United States Colored Troops? On May 23, 1864, while stationed at Hilton Head, South Carolina, the War Department changed the regiment’s official designation from the 1st Michigan Colored Infantry to the 102nd Regiment, United States Colored Troops. It kept that name for the rest of its service.

Did the 102nd USCT see combat? Yes, though its service was concentrated in the Department of the South rather than in the war’s larger battles. It first came under fire near Baldwin, Florida, in August 1864, and later saw action at Honey Hill and Deveaux’s Neck (Tulifinny) in December 1864, and during General Sherman’s operations and Potter’s Expedition through South Carolina in the war’s final months, including fighting at Dingle’s Mills, Boykin’s Mill, and Statesburg in April 1865.

Why are USCT pension files considered especially valuable for family history research? Because a formerly enslaved veteran or his widow often had no birth certificate, marriage license, or other legal paper trail from before the war. To prove eligibility, pension examiners took detailed sworn testimony about the veteran’s life under slavery, his enslaver’s name, how and when he escaped or was freed, and how he and his wife came to consider themselves married. That testimony, given by people describing their own lives in their own words, is often the earliest and most detailed firsthand record of a formerly enslaved family that exists anywhere.