Alfred B. Hilton

Alfred B. Hilton. Medal of Honor Recipient. After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, the U.S. Army recruited both free blacks and slaves. In August 1863, freedman Alfred B. Hilton and his brothers Aaron and Henry enlisted in the 4th U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) in Havre de Grace. Of more than two hundred county men who joined the USCT, twenty-six served in that regiment. Appointed Color Sergeant and described by fellow Medal of Honor recipient Christian Fleetwood as a "magnificent specimen of manhood…splendidly proportioned," Hilton carried the United States flag through several engagements around Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, in June-September 1864. On September 29, Hilton was mortally wounded at the Battle of New Market Heights east of Richmond. He died on October 21 at the U.S. General Hospital at Fort Monroe and is buried at Hampton National Cemetery. According to the posthumous Medal of Honor citation, "When the regimental color fell, this soldier seized the color and carried it forward, together with the national standard until disabled at the enemy's inner line." Hilton's brothers and many local 4th USCT veterans returned to Harford County after the war., Alfred R. Hilton, Harford County's sole Civil War Medal of Honor recipient and one of only 16 African American recipients for valor during the war, was born about 1837 and reared here on his father's farm in the free black community of Gravel Hill. He was one of manumitted slaves Isaac and Harriet Hilton's 14 children. Like Havre de Grace, Berkley and Kalmia, Gravel Hill was a post on the Underground Railroad before 1864. In 1860, the county's 3,664 free blacks were double the number of slaves and constituted 16 percent of the total population.