Frederick Funston
United States Army general, Medal of Honor recipient and botanist (1865 – 1917)
Frederick Funston (November 9, 1865 – February 19, 1917), also known as Fighting Fred Funston, was a general in the United States Army, best known for his roles in the Spanish–American War and the Philippine–American War; he received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the latter conflict.
Early life, education, and work
Funston was born in 1865 in New Carlisle, Ohio, to Edward H. Funston and Anne Eliza Mitchell Funston. In 1867, his family moved to Allen County, Kansas. His father was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1884 and served five terms.
Funston was a slight individual who stood 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) tall and weighed 120 pounds (54 kg) when he applied in 1886 to the United States Military Academy; he was rejected. Funston graduated from Iola High School in 1886. He attended the University of Kansas from 1886 to 1890. While there, he joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and became friends with William Allen White, who became a writer and won a Pulitzer Prize. He worked as a trainman for the Santa Fe Railroad before becoming a reporter in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1890.
Career
After one year as a journalist, Funston moved into more scientific exploration, focusing primarily on botany.
“Frederick Funston” enters the record as united States Army general, Medal of Honor recipient and botanist (1865 – 1917). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Frederick, Funston and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5497814. VIAF identifies the subject as 58007512. The Library of Congress control number is n84017628. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1865, 1917, 1867 and 1884.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frederick Funston” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.