Description
Commissioned as a 1st Lieutenant in Company E, 13th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry on July 16, 1861, he would fight for over a year and a half at this rank, participating in the battles of Bolivar Heights, Cedar Mountain and Thoroughfare Gap, he would be wounded in the regiments next fight at the 2nd Battle of Bull Run. Advanced to captain and commander of Company E in February 1863, who he would lead until October of that year. On October 23rd, he was transferred to the 59th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, and was promoted to major. In the June, 1864 during the assaults on Petersburg by the Army of the Potomac, he was once again wounded. When he returned to duty after recovering, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and assumed command of the regiment when the 59th Massachusetts’s commander, Colonel Jacob Park Gould, was wounded on July 30, 1864. When Colonel Gould succumbed to his wounded on August 21, Joseph Colburn was appointed as the regiment’s Colonel, but was never mustered in at that rank. He continued to led the 59th Massachusetts through the Petersburg siege and in the final fighting that culminated in the April 1865 surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. A few weeks after the end of the fighting, he was honorably discharged on April, 28th due at a medical disability that was described as “hypertrophy of the heart”. After the war he moved from his native Massachusetts to Colorado, where he spent many years as a successful miner. Back marked out of Roxbury, Massachusetts.
