DRUM, Richard Coulter, soldier, born in Pennsylvania, 28 May. 1825. He studied at Jefferson College, entered the army as a private in the 1st Pennsylvania volunteers on 8 December 1846, was engaged at the siege of Vera Cruz, and appointed a 2d lieutenant of U. S. infantry on 18 February 1847. He was brevetted 1st lieutenant for bravery at Chapultepec and the capture of the City of Mexico. After the war with Mexico he was transferred to the artillery, was engaged in the action at Blue Water, Neb., served as aide-de-camp to General Harney in the Sioux expedition, and was in Kansas during the troubles of 1856. From 1856 till 1858 he served as acting assistant adjutant general at the headquarters of the Department of the West, and subsequently as adjutant in the artillery school.

At the beginning of the civil war he was appointed assistant adjutant general of the U. S. army, and promoted to captain on 14 May 1861, major on 3 August 1861, and lieutenant colonel on 17 July 1862. On 24 September 1864, he was brevetted colonel, and on 13 March 1865, brigadier general for services during the war. He continued in the adjutant general's department, was stationed in 1866'8 at Philadelphia, in 1868'9 at. Atlanta, the headquarters of the Department of the South, receiving promotion as colonel on 22 February 1869, and on 15 June 1880, succeeded General Townsend, on the latter's retirement, as adjutant general of the army, with the rank of brigadier general.

His elder brother, Simon Henry Drum, soldier, born in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in June 1807; killed in action at the storming of the City of Mexico, 13 September 1847, was graduated at the U. S. military academy in 1830. He was assistant instructor of infantry tactics there in 1830'2, was engaged in the Florida war and the Canada border disturbances, and as captain of artillery in the occupation of Texas in 1846 served through the Mexican war, distinguished himself at Contreras, where he recaptured two fieldpieces taken from his regiment at Buena Vista, and fell at the assault on the City of Mexico after he had entered the Belen gate while directing the fire of a gun he had captured.