Adam Gale Malloy: Union Officer and Texas Republican Leader (1828–1911)

Adam Gale Malloy, soldier, Union officer, federal civil servant, and early Republican party leader in Texas, was born on September 10, 1828, in County Tipperary, Ireland, then ruled by the United Kingdom. Some sources suggest his birth year was 1830, but his tombstone and other sources reflect 1828. As an infant, he emigrated to the United States with his parents, John B. Malloy and Elizabeth (Douglas) Malloy, and they settled in Wisconsin.

Upon the outbreak of the Mexican War, Malloy’s father volunteered for service with the Fourth U.S. Infantry Regiment, and Adam, still a teenager and accompanied by his mother, joined the regiment as a fifer. The regiment was assigned to the Texas campaign and was soon fighting at the battle of Palo Alto, where Malloy’s father was killed on May 8, 1846. Adam Malloy then took up arms and served on the staff of Gen. William Jenkins Worth. Malloy served through the remainder of the war and fought in the battle of Mexico City.

After the war ended in 1848, Malloy settled in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and worked as a carpenter and in American Indian affairs. He married Catherine C. Doolan in Berrien County, Michigan, on November 6, 1853. The couple had six children.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Malloy recruited the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry and was elected the unit’s captain. In February 1862 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the Seventeenth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, known as the “Irish Brigade” because of the substantial number of Irish immigrants who made up the unit. Malloy commanded the regiment at the siege of Corinth and battle of Corinth. He was promoted to colonel in November 1862. He commanded the regiment at the siege of Vicksburg. The regiment, then mounted, also took part in an expedition against Fort Beauregard, Louisiana.

During the Atlanta campaign in 1864, Malloy’s brigade fought at Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Ezra Church, Jonesborough, and Lovejoy’s Station, Georgia; at Nashville, Tennessee; and at Kinston, North Carolina. On January 13, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Malloy for appointment as brevet brigadier general of volunteers for his “gallant and meritorious services.”

After the war, Malloy remained in the reorganized army and was assigned with the Seventeenth U.S. Infantry Regiment. He was later transferred to the Thirty-fifth U.S. Infantry Regiment. In July 1866 Malloy was assigned to the Freedmen’s Bureau in Jefferson, Marion County, Texas, where he served as both military and later appointed civilian mayor until he lost an election for the position in May 1874. Under his assignment to the Freedmen’s Bureau he was responsible for overseeing Harrison, Marion, Panola, Rusk, Davis, and Upshur counties in East Texas.

Malloy resigned from the regular army in 1870 and was appointed to the position of major general in the Reserve Militia, Second Division, by Texas governor Edmund J. Davis. General Malloy and other state troops later were sent to Limestone County to curb mob violence and restore order to the community of Groesbeck.

A. G. Malloy was listed as the postmaster of the Fort Worth post office from June 1874 through January 1875. In October 1874 he secured an appointment by President Ulysses S. Grant to the position of collector of internal revenue for the Fourth District with a headquarters at Marshall, Texas. The 1880 census recorded him living in Jefferson, Texas, and still in the job of internal revenue collector. On February 5, 1881, President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Malloy for the position of collector of customs at Galveston. The U.S. Senate confirmed his appointment on February 16, 1881. President Chester Arthur reappointed him in February 1885, and he served until November 1885. During his tenure, Malloy was a supporter of “deep water” for the port of Galveston and traveled to Washington, D.C., to gather support for federal funding for port improvement projects.

Malloy was one of the original members of the Republican party in Texas. He was a Texas delegate to five Republican national conventions and was a member of the Republican National Committee from 1880 to 1884. In the late 1880s Malloy was the founder and editor of the Texas Republican newspaper published in Dallas, where he lived at that time. He served as the Texas vice president of the United Irish Historical Society in 1889 and 1890.

Malloy was appointed the commander of the Texas Division of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) in February of 1889 and served until 1890. The GAR was a fraternal organization composed of Union veterans who served in the Civil War. The GAR was among the earliest advocacy groups in U. S. politics and supported voting rights for Black veterans, promoted patriotic education, promoted Memorial Day as a national holiday, and lobbied Congress to set up veterans' pensions. Upon the death of its last member, the GAR dissolved in 1956.

In June 1889 President Benjamin Harrison, a friend who served in Malloy’s brigade during the Civil War, appointed Malloy as “inspector of foreign immigration” in El Paso. Malloy served for approximately four years before reassignment to southern California, where he worked in several cities including Los Angeles and San Diego. He was a candidate for U.S. Congress from the Thirteenth District in El Paso in 1892 but lost to Democrat Jeremiah Vardaman Cockrell.

Adam Gale Malloy died at the age of eighty-three on November 10, 1911, in Escondido, California. He was buried in the nearby San Marcos Cemetery. His funeral was conducted under the direction of the local chapter of the GAR. His obituary in the Escondido Times-Advocate was headlined, “A Useful And Good Man Gone.”