Charles Dimmock (5 August 1800–27 or 28 October 1863), president of the Portsmouth and Roanoke Rail Road Company and chief of ordnance of the Confederate state of Virginia, was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, and was the son of Charles Dimmock and Deborah Lewis Dimmock. He entered the United States Military Academy at West Point on 7 September 1817 and graduated fifth in a class of twenty-four on 1 July 1821. Commissioned a second lieutenant in the 1st United States Artillery, Dimmock remained at the academy for one year as an assistant professor of engineering under Claudius Crozet.
United States Army
From 1823 to 1825 Dimmock was stationed at Fort Independence, in Massachusetts, interrupted by a year-long leave of absence to study garrisons and fortifications in Europe. He served one year in Virginia at the Artillery School for Practice at Fort Monroe, and one year as commissary of subsistence at Fort Trumbull in Connecticut. In 1827 Dimmock was transferred to Fort Severn in Maryland, and while there on 31 March 1828 married Henrietta Maria Fraser Johnson in Anne Arundel County. They had at least six daughters and three sons, among them Charles Henry Dimmock, who had a notable career in civil engineering, and Marion Johnson Dimmock, who became a prominent architect.
Commissioned a first lieutenant on 20 February 1828, Dimmock returned to the Artillery School at Fort Monroe that year and remained until 1831. He was the school's adjutant from 1 January to 29 April 1829. From 1831 to 1833 Dimmock was an assistant quartermaster at the breakwater near Cape Henlopen, Delaware, after which he returned again to Fort Monroe, where he was still serving when commissioned a captain on 6 August 1836.
Civil Engineer
Dimmock resigned from the army on 30 September 1836 and began a career in civil engineering. Initially he worked for Virginia's Board of Public Works and surveyed a potential canal route linking Back Bay and the Lynnhaven River, in Princess Anne County (later the city of Virginia Beach). In 1837 he prepared a survey for the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad in North Carolina. That autumn Dimmock surveyed a route for a proposed military road between Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1838 he joined the Portsmouth and Roanoke Rail Road Company, which operated a line from Portsmouth to the Roanoke River near Weldon, North Carolina. He became its president in the summer of 1840, and was soon embroiled in a controversy with the Petersburg Rail Road Company in an effort to control access to the bridge at Weldon. Dimmock resigned in December 1841; the railroad's properties were sold in 1846 to the Board of Public Works and eventually became part of the Seaboard Air Line Railway.
Developing an interest in steam navigation, Dimmock, William Spark, and Francis Browne Deane formed Charles Dimmock and Company, which constructed two iron, steam-powered canal boats. They launched the Governor McDowell on 17 June 1843 and the Mount Vernon on 3 October 1844. The Governor McDowell's screw propeller was innovative and efficient, but it drove the boat so fast that bow-wave action undermined the banks of the James River and Kanawha Canal, and they sold it in January 1847. During the 1840s Dimmock served as a director of the James River and Kanawha Company, resigning in November 1848.
Captain of the Public Guard
While living in Portsmouth Dimmock became a captain in the Virginia militia on 4 April 1840 and a lieutenant colonel on 9 November 1841. After he moved to Richmond in 1843 he won election as a captain of the Richmond Grays. He was not commissioned, however, because on 13 February 1844 Dimmock became the captain of the public guard, which had responsibility for the Capitol and its public square. He also became superintendent of the state armory, which included responsibilities as the superintendent of public edifices. He worked to improve the guard and the armory, created a new flag and new uniforms, started a band, and introduced moral reforms. On at least two occasions, he was given a leave of absence to undertake surveys of railroad routes, including in 1848 for the nascent Lynchburg and Tennessee Railroad Company (later Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company) and in 1853 for the Covington and Ohio Railroad on behalf of the Board of Public Works.
From 1846 to 1848 Dimmock allowed the private Armory Iron Company, of which he was secretary, to use part of the armory's grounds, building, and water power, but an investigation by the General Assembly ended the arrangement. In 1852 he leased a portion of the armory to a private milling company with which he was connected and approved using state money for repairs to the leased property. He was also involved in auctioning the lease of the premises, which was awarded to an agent working on his behalf. As a result of the conflict of interest, he nearly lost his job in 1856. As the superintendent of public edifices, Dimmock called for improvements in Capitol Square, although in 1856 he asked to have that duty separated from his responsibility for the public guard. He was the engineer in charge of erecting the equestrian statue of George Washington onto its pedestal prior to its 22 February 1858 dedication. He was also the chief marshal for the public re-interment of James Monroe in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery on 5 July 1858.
Chief of Virginia Ordnance Department
Dimmock served on the board of the Virginia Military Institute from 1844 to 1845 and won election from Monroe Ward to the Richmond common council in 1850, 1852, and 1857. Although encouraged to run for one of the three seats Richmond was entitled to in the Convention of 1861, he declined. On 26 March 1861 the governor appointed him colonel in charge of the Virginia ordnance department, while also retaining him as captain of the public guard. About two months later a Richmond newspaper editor acknowledged Dimmock's efforts to secure ammunition for the state's forces, writing that "a tribute of praise is due to Col. DIMMOCK for the admirable system and almost superhuman energy with which he is administering the matters entrusted to his charge." During the summer of 1861 Dimmock clashed with Josiah Gorgas, chief of ordnance for the Confederate States, over who controlled the equipment and munitions houses at the armory in Richmond. Later in the year Dimmock urged the city council to make preparations for Richmond's defense.
In 1862 he was the chief marshal during the inauguration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Vice President Alexander H. Stephens. The governor awarded Dimmock a brevet commission as brigadier general on 4 April 1862. From the summer of 1862 until the summer of 1863 he served in Lynchburg, where the ordnance department had been moved. When Dimmock issued his annual report in October 1862, he stated that his office had issued to Virginia's forces 331 artillery pieces and more than 27,000 artillery rounds. He estimated that his department had armed more than 113,000 men, but a large portion of the arms were outdated old flintlock muskets that, along with the other arms, required repair to be made operable. Charles Dimmock had a stroke at 10:00 o'clock in the morning of 27 October 1863 and died about midnight in his house in Richmond. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in the city.
Sources Consulted:
Eugene M. Sanchez-Saavedra, "'The Beau Ideal of a Soldier,' Brigadier General Charles Dimmock" (MA thesis, University of Richmond, 1971); birth date in Barnstable, Mass., Vital Records, 3:390; Anne Arundel Co., Md., Marriage Record (1810–1845), 77, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Md.; Alexander Crosby Brown, "The Canal Boat 'Governor McDowell': Virginia's Pioneer Iron Steamer," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 74 (1966): 336–345; Dimmock, Quartermaster Letter Book, 1834–1840, Accession 24542, Library of Virginia; Dimmock records and letters in Executive Papers of Governors James McDowell (1843–1846), William Smith (1846–1849), John B. Floyd (1849–1852), Joseph Johnson (1852–1856), Henry A. Wise (1856–1860), and John Letcher (1860–1864), all Record Group 3, and in Armory Iron Company Records, Accession 36728, Virginia Commandant of the Public Guard Records (1801–1850), Accession 36717, and Records of the Ordnance Department (1861–1864), Accession 38943, all Record Group 46, all Library of Virginia; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880–1901), esp. series 1, vol. 4; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 17 May 1861 (quotation); Charles Dimmock, Report of the Colonel of Ordnance, October 30, 1862 (1863); Bulletin of the Virginia State Library 13 (1920), portrait facing 12; obituaries and accounts of funeral in Richmond Daily Dispatch, in Daily Richmond Enquirer, in Daily Richmond Examiner, and in Richmond Whig, all 29, 30 Oct. 1863.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Cara F. Griggs.
How to cite this page:
Cara F. Griggs,"Charles Dimmock (1800–1863)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dimmock_Charles, accessed [today's date]).
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