Pero Mitchell

ero Mitchell, according to National Archives and National Park Service records, was born in Baltimore. At the time of his U.S. Navy enlistment in Baltimore on April 23, 1864 he was 25 years of age, stood 5'10", and identified his occupation as a laborer. The 1870 census also shows him identified as a laborer with Cumberland as his home. His initial term of enlistment was for two years with the ranking of Landsman. Mitchell served aboard the USS Stettin, an iron-screw steamship, from September 1864 through March 1865, and the USS Kearsarge, a small sailing warship, from 1865 to 1866. U.S.C.T. records from April 1864 indicate that Mitchell might have transferred to the Navy from the Army in that month. Pero Mitchell died on November 29, 1879 and is interred in Sumner Cemetery.

Sumner Cemetery is the final resting place for at least twelve African Americans who served their country in the Union Army and US Navy during the Civil War (1861-1865). Six of these are referred to on another page in the write-up pertaining to the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.), and are identified as follows:

Francis "Frank" Taylor
Thomas Lindsey
Abraham Craig
Thomas Simpson
Sam Parry
Hanibal Kinner

Thanks to research undertaken by Joseph Mckenzie and Byron Schulten we can add the following additional names to this list. This is from a newspaper article appearing in the Cumberland Evening Times, May 26, 1911 which identified the names of Civil War soldiers and sailors buried in local cemeteries. It should be noted that the 1911 newspaper article might have been incomplete at that time as there is at least one name missing.

Pero Mitchell
R.S. Snowden
Joseph Green
B. McTerry
Richard Mayson
William Jackson
Goss Simpson