Reference Library

Thomas Oswald Dyer was one of Mrs. Sarah Frances Mudd’s two brothers. Raised on the Dyer farm near the Mudds, he left home in 1852 when he was 17 years old to seek his fortune in the cotton business in New Orleans. Tom was 30 when the war broke out. He stayed out of the war for two years, but in September 1863, two months after the battle of Gettysburg, he made his way north and enlisted with the Louisiana Washington Artillery at Orange, Virginia on September 7, 1863. 

The Louisiana Washington Artillery was in the deciding battle of the Civil War at Appomattox, Virginia in early April 1865. When General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, his soldiers were given safe-passage passes to return peacefully to their homes. Some of Lee's soldiers, however, set out for home without the passes. Tom Dyer was apparently one of these, since he was arrested in Bryantown, Maryland on April 25, 1865. This was just four days after Dr. Mudd was arrested in connection with the Lincoln assassination. Tom was first sent to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. where Dr. Mudd was also being held. He was then sent to a prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York, and released on June 21, 1865 in a general amnesty. 

After leaving the prisoner of war camp, Dyer went to live for a few months with his brother Jeremiah Dyer in Baltimore, but then decided to return to New Orleans. In a letter Dr. Mudd wrote to Jeremiah Dyer on October 5, 1865, he said “I am sorry Tom is going to leave so early. I am under the greatest obligations to him for interest and kindness manifested.” When Dyer returned to New Orleans, he resumed working in the cotton business. During the years Dr. Mudd was in prison, Dyer provided him moral support, clothing, food, and spending money.

Tom Dyer died in New Orleans on November 26, 1891.