Lt. Col. Jacob M. Thornburgh was the commanding officer of the 4th Tennessee Cavalry (USA). He entered the Union Army as a private in 1861, and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment July 11, 1863.
Scion of a prominent East Tennessee family, Jacob Montgomery Thornburgh was born in New Market, Jefferson Co., Tennessee July 3, 1837. He studied law and was admitted to the bar 1861, when he began his practice in Jefferson County. After the War ended he returned to his Jefferson Co. law practice. He was appointed attorney general of the third judicial circuit of Tennessee in 1866, and moved to Knoxville in 1867. He won re-election to the attorney general post in 1868 and 1870, and was appointed United States Commissioner at the Internation Exposition of 1872 in Vienna, Austria.
Running as a Republican, Thornburgh won election to the US House of Representatives in 1872. He served three terms, from March 4, 1873 to March 3, 1879. His participation in Republican National politics also included serving as a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1872, 1876 and 1880. Following his career in Washington, he retired from public life and resumed his law practice in Knoxville, where he died September 19, 1890. He is buried at the Old Gray Cemetery in Knoxville.
(Information from "CQ Staff Directories" copyright Library of Congress.)
The book "East Tennessee and the Civil War" by Oliver P. Temple includes some interesting information about Jacob Thornburgh's family background. His father, Montgomery Thornburgh, was "a prominent Union speaker and leader" who was imprisoned by the Confederates for complicity in the bridge burnings of 1861. He was sent to prison at Madison, GA without trial, and died there. Jacob's brother was Thomas Tipton Thornburgh, "a major in the United States army, who was killed in Colorado, in 1879, gallantly fighting at the head of his command in a desperate battle with the Ute Indians."
Last updated June 27, 1999.