Foster, Ira Roe, 1813-1885.

Foster, Ira Roe

Rank : Colonel

Regiment : Georgia. Quartermaster General

Ira Roe Foster was born on January 13, 1813, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to Ransom and Nancy Foster. He first studied medicine and then practiced in South Carolina, and in 1841, became a licensed lawyer in Cherokee County, Georgia, where he also served as state legislator. Foster had extensive business interests in land, and in flour and saw mills, in north-central Georgia and Alabama. He remained active in state politics into the Reconstruction period.

During the Seminole Indian War in 1836, Foster served with distinction as a colonel of a mounted infantry, but was seriously wounded. He recovered and joined the Georgia militia in 1842, and became aide-de-camp for the Commander-in-Chief. George W. Crawford, governor of Georgia, made him a brigadier general in 1844. During the Civil War, Georgia Governor Joseph Brown appointed Foster quartermaster general for the state of Georgia, an office which he continued to fill after the collapse of the Confederacy. He worked tirelessly to maintain supplies and clothes for Georgia soldiers throughout the war. In 1865, Foster traveled to Virginia where he was first imprisoned by the Union Army as a member of the Confederate army, and then commissioned by the army to distribute livestock and supplies throughout Georgia.

Foster married Mildred Arthur Creighton Crooks in 1842. They had four children: Amalthea C.; Eryclina P.; Nannie C.; and Marcus L. In 1874, Foster moved to Gadsden, Alabama, where he owned farming land and a saw mill. He also became a state legislator for Alabama, a position he held until his death in 1885.

From the guide to the Ira Roe Foster papers, Foster, Ira Roe papers, 1862-1865, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)