Luther C. Ladd
American soldier
Luther Crawford Ladd (22 December 1843 – 19 April 1861) was a soldier in the Union Army who was killed during the Baltimore riot of 1861. He is often referred to as the first Union soldier killed in action during the American Civil War. Luther Crawford Ladd was 17 years old at the time of his death.
On April 13, 1861, Private Daniel Hough became the first non-combat casualty of the war when he was accidentally killed by a cannon that exploded along with an ammunition pile next to the gun during a salute to the flag at the U.S. Army's surrender of Fort Sumter to Confederate forces on April 13, 1861. Private Edward Galloway was mortally wounded by the same explosion and died three days later.
Luther C. Ladd was born in Bristol, New Hampshire, the son of John Ladd. He resided on the Ladd farm, south of Fowler's River. In 1853 Luther and his father moved to nearby Alexandria, New Hampshire, where he attended district schools. At age 16 in 1860, Ladd left Alexandria for Lowell, Massachusetts, where he obtained employment at the Lowell Machine Shop. In April 1861 Luther answered President Lincoln's first call for 75,000 men by enlisting for three months in Co.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16066079. VIAF identifies the subject as 29447603. The Library of Congress control number is nr98023499. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1843, 1861, 1853 and 1860.
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This entry incorporates text from “Luther C. Ladd” 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.