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Lt. Col. Nathan Augustus Monroe Dudley

Lt. Col. Nathan Augustus Monroe Dudley was the meddlesome commandant of Ft. Stanton during most of the Lincoln County War and its aftermath.

From early April, 1878, to early March, 1879, he repeatedly thrust himself and his troops into several civil disturbances involving the Tunstall-McSween and Dolan-Riley men. He was tyrannical, egomaniacal, antagonistic, condescending, bombastic, and defiant. Dudley knew he wielded the most guns and the most men, and for a time ruled Lincoln County with impunity while undercutting civil authority. The intimidating presence of Dudley and his troops in Lincoln and his intentional decisions and actions during the last 48 hours of the Five-Day Battle there in July, 1878, contributed to the deaths of five people, the torching of the McSween home, and the looting of the Tunstall Store.

Dudley, at times a hard drinker, had a checkered military record. But he also had connections.

He had often clashed with his fellow officers throughout his tumultuous 36-year career, had crossed swords with his superiors, and had spurned civil authorities. While stationed in New Mexico, Dudley had even stood up to the New Mexico Military District Commander, Col. Edward Hatch, a nemesis since 1869.

Court-martialed three times (in Kansas, in 1861; in Arizona, in 1871, and in New Mexico, in 1877), Dudley was found guilty each time on some of the charges, was reprimanded, and was suspended from rank with loss of pay. But his longtime personal friendships with high-ranking officers and politicos in Washington, D.C., continually got him out of hot water.

Dudley, whose towering ego was easily wounded, had also fought with New Mexico Gov. Lew Wallace until an exasperated Col. Hatch suspended him from command of Ft. Stanton in March, 1879. Feeling his reputation tarnished, he demanded and received an immediate Court of Inquiry. Dudley was cleared after the three month-long military trial at Ft. Stanton ended that July. He was also acquitted of Susan McSween's charges of arson and slander after a swift civil trial in La Mesilla that November.

Sent to Ft. Union, a fading post overlooking the old Santa Fe Trail where he had been its commandant periodically from November, 1876, to August, 1877, Dudley assumed command a sixth and final time from Jan. to June, 1880. While still commandant at Ft. Stanton, he was also involved in a military campaign in southwest New Mexico to capture the Apache leader Victorio in September, 1879, and in a second campaign there (and in Mexico) against the Apache leader in the Fall of 1880, while commandant of Ft. Cummings.

Born on August 20, 1825, in Lexington, Mass. (where his namesake grandfather and six Munroe relatives were among the 77 Minutemen who stood resolutely on Lexington Common in the opening battle of the American Revolution), Dudley seemed predestined to a military career.

During the Civil War, he rose in rank after distinguishing himself at the Battles of Baton Rouge (in 1862) and nearby Port Hudson (1863), the last Confederate bastion on the Mississippi.

Dudley retired from the army in 1889 and returned to his wife Elizabeth Gray Jewett's hometown of Roxbury, Mass. Resilient and unapologetic to the end, he died there on April 29, 1910. Dudley was buried in Arlington National Cemetery beneath an ornate tombstone that displays his highest rank, that of Brig. Gen., for which he was brevetted at the end of the Civil War.

Sources:

Billington, Monroe Lee, New Mexico's Buffalo Soldiers (Niwott: University Press of Colorado, 1991).
Jacobsen, Joel, Such Men As Billy The Kid, The Lincoln County War Reconsidered (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
Mullin, Robert N., ed., Maurice G. Fulton's History of the Lincoln County War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968).
Nolan, Frederick, The Lincoln County War: A Documentary History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).
Nolan, Frederick, The West of Billy The Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).

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His Kinfolk Answered the Call

Nathan Dudley's seven Monroe ancestors didn't waver when Capt. John Parker mustered his 77 Minutemen on Lexington Common in the wee hours of April 19, 1775. Like Capt. Parker, some of the colonial militia were British loyalists, veterans of wars against the French and Indians in the 1740s and 1750s. Some, like Capt. Parker, had been members of Rogers's Rangers, too.

Gathered there on the village green, among the nine Harringtons, the Munroes, four Parkers, three Lockes, three Reeds, and three Tidds, were eight fathers and sons.

The eldest of the Munroes, Robert, age 63, was there. He was Capt. Parker's third in command. His two sons and two sons-in-law stood beside him. Robert died in the fighting that morning.

William Munroe, Capt. Parker's young Orderly Sergeant, was there, too. His busy Munroe Tavern, a mile east of Lexington, overlooked the very road on which British Maj. John Pitcairn's five companies of light infantrymen and grenadiers were marching.

British Brig. Gen. Lord Earl Percy, whose troops covered Maj. Pitcairn's hasty retreat back to Boston, would use the red-brick tavern that afternoon as a temporary headquarters and field hospital. Today the historic Munroe Tavern.

William's cousin, Jedediah, was on Lexington green that morning as well, armed with musket and balls, and his family's ancestral Scottish sword. He was wounded at Lexington. Edmund Munroe stood with him; he had been Maj. Rogers's regimental adjutant. Robert's nephew, Ebenezer Munroe, was wounded at Lexington, too.

Finally, Dudley's namesake ancestor, young Nathan Munroe, was there, just yards from the warmth and safety of his boyhood home overlooking the village green.From a front window inside the home, his father, Marrett, could make out the militia milling about the two-acre triangle in the early light. When the fighting began, one Minuteman, Joseph Comee, fled wounded through a hail of bullets into Marrett Munroe's home and out the back door to safety.

Today the historic Monroe Tavern, built in the 1690s, is open to the public, and displays Munroe family memorabilia and the table at which President Washington dined when he visited Lexington and Concord in 1789. The Marrett and Nathan Munroe House, which can be seen from Lexington green, is a private residence.

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