Captain Jonas H. French was provost Marshal of Louisiana (Chief of Police) during General Weitzel’s Administration.

In 1863, Weitzel commanded one of Bank’s brigades.

In 1864, he commanded a division in the operations against Petersburg, and in the latter part of the year went as second under Butler to Wilmington, N.C. Wherever he went, he won distinction. It was Weitzel’s division which first entered Richmond in April, 1865. He accompanied Butler as Chief of Engineers; and did more to popularize Butler’s Administration than all his other aides combined.

Before the war he was a member of Beauregard’s engineer brigade in New Orleans, along with McClellen, Duncan, Lowell and other distinguished military men.

Godfrey Weitzel, Commander of the 25th Corps, U. S. Volunteers, (Army of the James) was the son of Lewis and Susan Weitzel, who emigrated from Rhenish Bavaria and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was born in Cincinnati, November 1832, and graduated from West Point second in his class of 33, in 1855. On January 13, 1865, he married Miss Louisa Bogen, of New Orleans, a daughter of Peter Bogen, a prominent pork packer and manufacturer of Catawba wine in Cincinnati before the war.

Among the works on which he was engaged during 1882-1883 were a harbor of refuge on Lake Huron, the Louisville and Portland Canal, the St. Mary’s Falls Canal, St. Mary and Detroit Rivers, charts of Northern and Northwestern Lakes, bridging the Ohio, Lighthouse engineering, construction of Forts, Delaware and Mifflin, harbors at Wilmington, Del., and Chester, Pa.

He died in Philadelphia, March 19, 1884, at his residence, No. 102 South Thirty-sixth Street, from typhoid fever. At the time of his death he held a high position in the Engineers Corps. He was a brilliant man. A wife and eight year old little girl survived, also his aged mother, who lived in Cincinnati, where his remains were taken for burial.

10/23/2002