Edward Seymour Walton letters

Collection

Identifier: VAULT-Case-MS-folio E5 W175

Staff Only

Abstract

Colonel in the U.S. Army. Contains letters from the Philippines, 1900-1901, with the exception of one dated 1911; letters from Trieste, 1918-19; and other miscellaneous material.

Dates

1900-1919

Creator

Walton, Edward Seymour (Person)

Biographical / Historical

Colonel in the U. S. Army. He was born December 5, 1871, at New Orleans, La., and was a son of Seymour and Mary (Pollock) Walton. His father Seymour Walton along with Homer N. Hibbard organized the Fort Dearborn National Bank. On August 31, 1894, Edward enlisted in the 15th U. S. Infantry, and was commissioned Second Lieutenant of Infantry, April 19, 1897, being promoted First Lieutenant in 1899 and received his Captaincy in 1901. He was promoted Major of Infantry, July 1, 1916, promoted Lieutenant Colonel, August 5, 1917, and Colonel, December 8, 1917. He served in the Philippine Insurrection, and in the Punitive Expedition into Mexico in 1916. In 1917 he was placed in command of Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, where he organized the prison camp for the first German prisoners of the World War. On July 25, 1917, he was detailed in the Quartermasters Corps, and shortly after was assigned as Corps Quartermaster of the Second Corps, operating with the British Expeditionary Force. He served in defensive sectors and in the four major actions of the Somme Defensive, the Lys Offensive, the Somme Offensive, and the Ypres-Lys Offensive. After the Armistice, he was assigned duty distributing supplies to the starving peoples of Serbia, Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia and Roumania, with headquarters at Fiume and Trieste. For some time he has been in charge of all construction work at Wright Field, upon which duty he was engaged up to the time of his death in 1926.