Felix Battles

Felix Battles (early 1840s – April 20, 1907) was an American former slave and Civil War veteran who served in the United States Colored Troops, and one of the first settlers of Moorhead, Minnesota, where he was a businessman running his own barbershop. He was called by one newspaper the "pioneer barber of the Red River Valley".

Biography Little is known about Battles' early life. He was born into slavery on a cotton plantation in the early 1840s in Shelby County, Tennessee, near Nashville, and grew up in Mississippi. He was owned by Eliza Dawson, wife of William C. Dawson. Battles gained his freedom as a teenager, though it is not known how or exactly when.

As a young man, he lived in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and worked on steamboats on the Mississippi River. In 1864, the 18th United States Colored Infantry Regiment of the United States Colored Troops formed in Missouri to serve in the Union Army. In August that year, Battles enlisted in Saint Paul. He did so as one of about 200,000 black men serving in the military during the Civil War – and at great risk to himself. Black soldiers captured by the Confederacy faced enslavement or execution. The programming director of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County commented, "He was free, but he risked it all again to join the Union Army... He returned to the South knowing that the Confederacy often did not allow African American soldiers to surrender. They were often killed when trying to surrender, or their bodies were sometimes mutilated and put on display." Battles served in Company G and reached the rank of corporal. The regiment fought in the Battle of Nashville. His obituary described him as "a quiet, unobtrusive man, [who] was respected by all who knew him." Battles' funeral was held on April 23, 1907, with a number of war veterans in attendance. He was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Moorhead.

Family Battles and his wife, Kate, had two children – Julia, who died in childhood, and Richard (1871–1916). The Appeal described Kate as "always looking around to find some poor sick person to whom she can give a helping hand." She died in 1902 at 50 years of age.

Legacy In 2018, the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County spearheaded a project to create a monument in honor of Felix Battles in Moorhead. Artist and local historian Markus Krueger designed the monument – a life-sized steel stencil of an African American Union Civil War soldier.