Navy Profiles
Blinn Converse, son of Caleb W. B. and Harriet (Derby) Converse, was born in Richville (Manchester), Vt., 27 September 1836. He attended school there until he was 15 years old, then found employment as a fireman and assistant engineer in Port Henry, New York, where he remained until the breaking out of the civil War. He enlisted first in August 1861, as a member of the regimental band, 22nd New York Volunteer Infantry. He mustered out 15 August 1862 when regimental bands were disbanded. He returned to civilian pursuits with the New York and Erie Railroad as fireman, assigned to the Newburgh branch, with headquarters at Newburgh. He remained there until September 1864, when he was appointed Acting Third Assistant Engineer, US Navy. On 4 October 1864, he married Helen Mar Gardner, daughter of Thomas and Abigail (Hulburt) Gardner, a native of Panton, Vermont.
Converse was initially ordered to Boston, Massachusetts for duty on USS Little Ada, and participated in the capture of Forts Fisher and Caldwell, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, N.C., and in the capture of the city of Wilmington. The vessel was then ordered to the mouth of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay for duty.
About 1 March 1865 he was assigned to duty on board U.S.S. "Mystic". About May 1 the Mystic was ordered to the Washington Navy Yard to be decommissioned, and Converse resigned his commission on 17 May.
After the war he moved to Minnesota where he was a locomotive engineer with the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, the Omaha and North Western Line. He was later a Chief Engineer for the U.S. Army Building in St Paul. He was a Mason and prominently active in the Grand Army of the Republic. Blinn Converse passed away 12 March 1910, and is buried in the Pioneers and Soldiers cemetery, Minneapolis. His wife, Helen had died ten years previously.
(to be continued ...)
Notes:
Charles Allen Converse, Genealogy of The Converse Family and Allied Families; Some of the Ancestors and Descendants of Samuel Convers, Jr. and Major James Converse,, (Eben Putnam, Boston, Mass., 1905), pp. 579-581
Friends of the Cemetery, an all-volunteer organization dedicated to the restoration and preservation of Minneapolis (MN) Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery.
George Benedict, "Vermont in the Civil War,"
