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Our Camp’s namesake, Samuel Rush Watkins,
was born on June 26, 1839 near Columbia, Tennessee. He received his
education at Jackson College at Columbia and, worked as a store clerk prior
to his enlistment in the Confederate Army. Sam originally enlisted in
the “Bigby Greys” of the 3rd Tennessee in Mount Pleasant but transferred
shortly thereafter to become a private in the First Tennessee Infantry,
Company H, the “Maury Greys” in the spring of 1861.
Sam served
throughout the duration of the war, taking part in the battles of Shiloh,
Corinth, Murfreesboro, Shelbyville, Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Missionary
Ridge, The 100 Days Battles, Atlanta, Jonesboro, Franklin, Nashville and
was once promoted to fourth corporal for picking up a Union flag from the
battlefield during the Battle of Atlanta, July 22, 1864. Constant on his
mind was the hope that he could return to old Maury County and marry his
sweetheart, Jennie. Sam never considered himself a hero, just a common
“Webfoot”.
Of the 120
men who enlisted in Co.H in 1861, Sam Watkins was one of the 7 alive when
General Joe Johnston’s Army of Tennessee surrendered to General William
Tecumseh Sherman in North Carolina April, 1865. Of the 1,200 men who fought
in the First Tennessee, only 65 were left to be paroled on that day.
Sam returned
to Maury County at war’s end to find the area devastated after years under
Union occupation. He married his beloved Jennie and worked make a life for
his growing family. At one point, he operated a small store in Columbia
before returning to the Ashwood Community near Mt. Pleasant.
As the years
came and went, Sam was coaxed by members of his family to write down his
experiences so that his children and grandchildren would know what he had
done during the War. In 1881, 20 years after the war began, Sam, with “ a
house full of young rebels clustering around my knees... " Began
writing his memoirs of the war, recounting his experiences in "Co.
Aytch: A Side Show of the Big Show.”
Descendants
of Sam relate the stories of Mr. Sam, sitting by the wood stove with his
stub of a pencil doing his writing in the cold mornings, laughing at times
at something he had remembered and put to paper or, softly sobbing as he
wrote of the horrors he had lived through. Originally serialized in the
Columbia, Tennessee Herald, “Co. Aytch” was published in a first edition of
2,000 in book form in 1882.
There were
plans for a second publishing and Sam spent many hours penciling revisions
in his worn copy, it was not to be. Crippled by years of hard marching,
hard fighting and the struggles of life in the Reconstruction era South,
Samuel Rush Watkins passed away on July 20, 1901 at the age of 62 in his
home in the Ashwood Community. He was buried with honors by the members of
the Leonidas Polk Bivouac, United Confederate Veterans in the cemetery of
the Zion Presbyterian Church. His pen was silenced by death but
his spirit lives on in the scores of readers who discover his work each
year.
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