Cook County IL Archives Biographies.....Chetlain, Augustus Louis 1824 - 1891
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Deb Haines http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00003.html#0000719 August 9, 2008, 10:34 am

Author: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary

CHETLAIN, Augustus Louis, soldier, was born in St. Louis, Mo., Dec. 26, 1824; 
son of Swiss parents who emigrated from Neuchatel, Switzerland, to Red River, 
British America, in 1823. Two years later they removed to the United States, 
lived in St. Louis during 1825, and early in 1826 settled at Galena, Ill., 
where the son received a common-school education, and entered mercantile life. 
At a meeting held in Galena in response to President Lincolns call for 
volunteers in 1861, he was the first to enlist, and was chosen captain of a 
company which became a part of the 12th Illinois regiment, of which he was 
commissioned lieutenant-colonel, April 16, 1862. From September, 1861, to 
January, 1862, he was in command at Smithland, Ky.; he then rejoined his 
regiment and led it in the Tennessee campaign. He participated in the capture 
of Fort Henry and at the battle of Fort Donelson. He was promoted colonel and 
led his regiment at Shiloh, April 6, 1862, and at the siege of Corinth, May, 
1862. After the battle of Corinth, in which he distinguished himself, he was 
left in command of Corinth by General Rosecrans. While in this service he 
recruited the first colored regiment raised in the west. He was relieved in 
1863, was promoted brigadier-general and given charge of the organization of 
colored troops in Tennessee and Kentucky. He was successful in raising a force 
of seventeen thousand men, for which service he received special commendation 
in General Thomass report to the department of war. During 1864-65 he was in 
command of the post of Memphis, and in June of the latter year was brevetted 
major-general for meritorious service. In the fall of 1865 he was given 
command of the central district of Alabama, and in February, 1866, was 
mustered out. In 1867 President Johnson appointed him collector of internal 
revenue for Utah and Wyoming, and in 1869 General Grant gave him the 
appointment of U. S. consul-general at Brussels, which office he resigned in 
1872. On his return to the United States he took up his residence in Chicago, 
where he was made president of the Home bank on its organization in 1872, and 
of the Industrial bank of Chicago in 1891. He published Recollections of 
Seventy Years (1900).

Additional Comments:
Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans.
Vol. I-X. Rossiter Johnson, editor. Boston MA: The Biographical Society. 1904.

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