Rufus Saxton of Deerfield, Massachusetts, graduated from West Point in 1849, and had a long and distinguished career in the military. He fought the Seminole Indigenous people in Florida, taught artillery at West Point, New York, and worked on General George McClellan’s staff surveying the Rocky Mountains in 1853. During the Civil War (1861-1865) he was a captain under McClellan in West Virginia, a Brigadier General of Volunteers in 1862, and commander at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia,  in May and June of 1862. From 1862 to 1865, he was Military Governor of the Department of the South, and in 1865, he was appointed Brigadier General of the United States Army. Saxton was Assistant Commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau for the states of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida from the end of the war until January, 1866. On April 25, 1893, Saxton was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service at Harper’s Ferry.