View source for Herod T. Liddiard

Place of Birth: London

Date of enlistment: 4 December 1872

Age given at enlistment: 21

Rank: Private

Company: E

Location on 25 June 1876: Pack train escort and hilltop fight

	

Thomas Liddiard and his wife, Martha, were married in, or near, Stroud, Gloucester, in the autumn of 1849.  Their first child, Herod Thomas, was born in the riverside village of Rodborough, almost certainly in 1852. [At the time of writing no record of his date of birth has been found.]  A daughter, Mary, was born ca. 1857.  At the time of the 1861 Census the family was living in Dudbridge, a small village on the Stroudwater Canal which linked the River Severn with the Thames, and where Herod, then age 9, would later work as a boatman.

Military Register of Custer’s Last Command (Williams); Participants in the Battle of the Little Big Horn (Wagner) and Wild Geese of the Greasy Grass (Norman) all accept Liddiard was born in London, as stated in the U.S. Army, Register of Enlistments.  A ‘boatman’ working on the River Thames in London has always been referred to as a ‘waterman’ and is the term Liddiard almost certainly would have used had he’d been born  and worked in the capital.

	

A convicted felon

Western Daily Press, 19 February 1870 – STROUD PETTY SESSIONS, Friday – Herod Thomas Liddiard, charged, on remand, with stealing a whip, the property of H.C. Cooper, was sentenced to one month’s hard labour at Gloucester. The prisoner was further charged by P.C. George with stealing two iron pulley blocks, the property of  Mr William Poole, and sentenced to three months’ hard labour, the second term to commence at the expiration of the first.

Western Daily Press, 21 October 1870 – GLOUCESTERSHIRE QUARTER SESSIONS – THURSDAY  -  SENTENCE OF PRISONERS – Herod Thomas Liddiard, 18, twelve months [hard labour], and seven years’ police supervision, for stealing £4 from James Hyde, at Stroud.

About the same time as Herod was released from prison, his mother, Martha Liddiard, died of ‘Disease of Mitral Valves of Heart – Diarrhea,’ age 49, on 19 October 1871 in the village of Thrupp, near Stroud and just eight days later Herod boarded the S.S. Virginia at Gravesend [Port of London]. On 30 October the ship slipped anchor off Deal in Kent and sailed for America, via Le Havre, France, arriving in New York on the 15th of November. So much for the seven years’ police supervision! His father’s ‘widowerhood’ was short-lived as Thomas Liddiard remarried a few months later. 

Enlists in U.S. Army

Liddiard enlisted in the U.S. Army in Troy, New York, on 4 December 1872, and assigned to company E, 7th Cavalry, which he joined at Unionville, South Carolina, on 15 February 1873.  He was described as having blue eyes, light hair, a fair complexion, 5’ 5 1/4″ tall, having previously been employed as a boatman. He participated in the Yellowstone Campaign (1873) and Black Hills Expedition (1874).  On 20 March 1875, he was sentenced to one months’ hard labour and loss of $5 for receiving a stolen army blanket and selling it to a civilian.

On the day of the battle he was assigned to the pack train escort and joined the remnants of Reno’s battalion and Benteen’s three companies on Reno Hill. According to Corporal George W. Wylie, Company D – in an interview with Walter M. Camp in Junction City, Kansas, on 16 October 1910 – “On Reno hill Liddiard, Co. E, was killed while taking aim at some Indians that Benteen was pointing out to the men. There were several men there talking, and Liddiard, who was a good shot, lay down to take aim talking at the same time. It was noticed that he had stopped talking, and seeing his face turned down and the blood running around the rim of his hat was the first intimation that he was dead. However, Roger Williams writes in Military Register of Custer’s Last Command, page 190, that he died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen [the] bullet entering the front and exited near the spine while unpacking mules on Reno Hill. Williams’ version is supported by ’The Classified Return of Wounds,’ prepared by Dr. Williams, chief medical officer, who lists 59 wounded enlisted men, including Herod T. Liddiard, Andrew J. Moore, Geo. Lell and Jas. J Tanner who died of their wounds on Reno Hill. RG94, Entry 624. [Military Register, p.348, note d.] 

He is listed as H.T. LIDDIARD on the battle monument.

Final Statement of Herod T. Liddiard signed by 1st Lieut, Charles C. De Rudio, Commanding Company, at Fort Abraham Lincoln on 5 December 1876.

    DUE SOLDIER
    For retained pay under act of May 12, 1872 … 25.40
    For clothing not drawn in kind … $49.37
    For deposits with the USA Paymaster July 8, 1875 … $7.00
    Proceeds of sale of effects [September 1, 1877] … $17.70
    DUE UNITED STATES
    For tobacco … $1.14
    The above statement does not take into account basic pay due for the period May 1 to June 25, 1876.
    Note: De Rudio added that Liddiard’s body ‘was supposed to be among those recovered and buried on the battlefield but was not recognized,’ but was perhaps misinformed as the dead on Reno Hill were buried in the rifle pits that had been dug there. 

Whether or not Liddiard had kept in touch with his father, who died at age 68 in Stroud in the summer of 1888, is not known. Thomas Liddiard’s widow, Esther, who proved his will, was the sole beneficiary of his estate of £320. 10s. 10d, which was a reasonable sum of money in those days.