EUGENE ASA CARR
CARR, EUGENE ASA, brigadier and brevet major-general United States army, honorably retired in 1893. He repeatedly won promotion, gaining honors among the soldiers of the Civil war, and the Indian fighters who protected the frontier while civilization was pushing into the Great West. He was four times reported killed, and had the very unusual pleasure of reading a large number of laudatory obituary notices of himself which appeared in the leading papers of the country.
He was born in Concord, Erie county, New York, March 20, 1830. His parents were Clark Murwin and Delia Ann (Torrey) Carr. His grandfather, Clark Carr, was a Baptist minister and a farmer. His father was a man of ability, character and influence, and rendered public service in county, state, and federal offices. The family came from Normandy to Scotland and England with King James.
The early fife of General Carr was passed in western New York. Though fond of study, his tastes and amusements were those of the average boy. After attending district and private schools and academies, and teaching for part of a winter before he was sixteen, he entered, in 1846, the United States military academy at West Point, from which he was graduated in 1850, ranking nineteenth in a class of forty-four members.
Soon after his graduation he was stationed at the cavalry school of practice, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with the rank of brevet second lieutenant of mounted riflemen. From 1851 he was on frontier duty serving in Missouri, in Kansas, on the plains toward the Rocky Mountains, and in Texas, where he was wounded, and, for gallantry, was promoted in the first cavalry, newly raised in 1855. In the troubles in Kansas in 1856-57 he rendered efficient assistance as aide to Governor Robert J. Walker, and, until the opening of the Civil war, he was on the frontier and was engaged in the suppression of Indian outbreaks. In 1861 he was appointed colonel of the 3d Illinois cavalry volunteers, having been a captain of regular cavalry
