William Armstrong Cavitt

Born in Mississippi, he moved with his family to a farm near Cuero in Dewitt County, TX at age 7 (c. 1849), and he was helping to work the place at the US Census of 1860. On 18 March 1862, then age 19, he enlisted in Gonzales County as a Private in Company A, 4th Texas Infantry.

He was with his Company in action at Fox's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September and at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was captured in May 1863, probably at Suffolk, VA, and paroled at Fortress Monroe, VA on 13 May. He was wounded at Chickamauga, GA on 19 September 1863 and lost his right leg to amputation. He was afterward absent from his Company - "permanently disabled, in Miss." or in Texas.

He was a "well known rancher in the Southwest" but in 1900 he was a road repairer in Jeff Davis County, TX.

Service information from Davis,1 as W.C. Cavett, and his Compiled Service Records,2 via fold3, also as William C. Cavitt. Polley2 says he lost his leg at Gettysburg. Personal details from family genealogists, Charles F. Coan's A History of New Mexico (Vol. 2, 1925) [via GoogleBooks], and the US Census of 1850, 1860, and 1900.

He married Elizabeth "Lizzie" Powell (b. 1849) in June 1868 in Bexar County and they had a daughter Catherine (b. 1885).

See a fine pair of post-war photographs of him, with his new wife and his father, respectively, over on the blog.

10/20/1842; Vicksburg, MS

09/09/1918; Pankey Ranch, South Seco Creek, Sierra County, NM; burial in Hermosa, NM