Col william mcnamara biography

First SergeantWilliam McNamara (c. 1835 – March 16, 1912) was an Irish-born soldier in the U.S. Army who served with the 4th U.S. Cavalry during the Texas–Indian Wars. He received the Medal of Honor for gallantry against the Comanche Indians at the Red River in Texas on September 29, 1872.

Biography

William McNamara was born in County Mayo, Ireland about 1835. He emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the U.S. Army in Baltimore, Maryland. Spending much of his military career after the Civil War on the frontier, McNamara participated in campaigns against the Southern Plains Indians for over 20 years, becoming a veteran Indian fighter. By the early 1870s, he was a First sergeant in Company F of the fourth U.S. Cavalry then stationed in Texas.^[1]

On September 28, 1872, he was part of Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie's expedition over the Staked Plains. Following a one-day march to the North Fork of the Red River, a lodge en