Joseph B. Plummer

Joseph Bennett Plummer (November 15, 1816 August 9, 1862) was a career United States Army officer, and rose to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers during the American Civil War.

Biography Plummer was born in Barre, Massachusetts, and educated in the common schools. He taught school for several years. In 1837, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy and graduated in 1841. He received a brevet rank of second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Infantry and served on garrison duty. He missed the first year of the Mexican–American War due to sickness. Plummer did quartermaster duty on the Texas frontier from 1848 until 1861. In 1852, he was promoted to a captain in the 1st U.S. Infantry.

He was wounded at the Battle of Wilson's Creek while commanding a battalion of Regulars. Plummer was commissioned as the colonel of the 11th Missouri Volunteers in September 1861 and assigned command of the post at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a position he filled until March 1862. Then, he was appointed as a brigadier general, U.S. Volunteers on March 11, 1862.

Plummer was also friendly with his wife's brother, Temple Clark, who also served in the Mexican–American War and was a Union Army officer in the Civil War. He invited Temple Clark to join his staff in the Army of the Mississippi in the months before his death.

Plummer and his wife had two children, Satterlee Clark Plummer and Lydia Lee Plummer. Satterlee Clark Plummer graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1865 and was a career U.S. Army officer like his father. He died of pneumonia in 1881 at the home of his mother, in Washington, D.C., and was posthumously promoted to captain. Lieutenant Plummer also wrote correspondence for newspapers under the pen name "Sleeping Friar".