Samuel Rush Watkins was born on June 26, 1839 near Columbia, TN.  He was known as Sam Watkins. He attended Jackson College at Columbia and worked as a store clerk. In the spring of 1861, when he was 21, Sam enlisted as a Private in the First Tennessee Infantry, Company H, as the men called it, in the Confederate Army.  He was part of the Maury Grays. Of the 120 original recruits, Sam was one of 7 who survived.

He wanted to fight simply because he believed the North, and northerners, had no business in the South and he believed in states rights. He loved Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.  He was a devout Christian and he did not take clothing from the dead.

Sam was on every march that was ever made by the First Tennessee Regiment during the whole Civil War. He served throughout the war and fought in just about every famous battle and many that nobody knows today.

While in Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River, where it was ¼ mile wide, the Confederate soldiers were hungry and saw a cornfield across the river. Sam swam across the river, with a couple of his fellow soldiers and picked the corn. There was no way to get it back across the river, so they tied the green parts of the corn together into a long, long rope of 100 ears of corn. They put the corn rope in their mouths and swam back across the Tennessee River. The Johnny Rebs munched on cooked corn.

Sam Watkins was at his picket duty across the bridge. Picket duty is where you stand guard and if there be any Yankees, you holler “Who goes” and if a Yankee calls, you shoot him.  Sam stood on his picket one day and saw a huge snowstorm coming. He was there with two Dutchmen who could not speak English worth a cent. It started lightening and thundering for awhile and then it started snowing big clumps about goose egg size. All the sudden, he felt so hot that he wanted to take off his jacket, but he was freezing. Sam started thinking about his mother and home. Then he fell asleep. The Dutchman woke him up and started hollering, “Here’s your mule.” He kept hollering it. Then all the sudden they saw two horses galloping toward them to go across the bridge, then they heard Yankee firing. So then they got up and Sam woke up completely and the Dutchman was still hollering “Here’s your mule” and then they went across and told the rest of the Confederate Army that Yankees were near.

On one of Sam’s long marches during the winter, it was a very cold night march. Sam started freezing on the march. His feet froze almost stiff and he came very close to freezing to death marching. 20 years later, he still suffered from his frost bitten feet.

Sam was on picket another night and he was going to relieve 5 men. They had just gotten there and they saw something that chilled their bones. All 5 men they were relieving had frozen to death. One was standing with a loaded gun, frozen, with icicles hanging from his gun. Another leaning on a post, writing a letter. One sitting by a fire that was out, holding a cup of something. Two were pacing back and forth, frozen, with their feet up high in march style.

Sam fought in many major battles in Tennessee including Chattanooga, Franklin, Nashville, Shiloh, Spring Hill, Stones River, and battles in Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia.

Sam came home, married his sweetheart Jennie and had a “house full of young rebels clustering around my knees and bumping my elbows.” Sam Watkins died on July 20, 1901.