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(1835 - 1863)
Home State: Indiana
Command Billet: Commanding Company
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
Son of US Marine Corps officer Samuel Edmiston Watson (1791-1847), by 1850 he was living with his widowed mother and siblings (he had 8 sisters and a brother) at Charlestown in Clark County, IN. He was a Cadet at the US Military Academy from July 1851 to March 1854, age 16 to 19, but did not graduate. He was appointed 2nd Lieutenant, 2nd United States Infantry on 21 February 1857. He was promoted to First Lieutenant, 14th United States Infantry on 14 May 1861and to Captain on 24 October 1861.
On the Campaign
He commanded Company H of the First Battalion, 14th US Infantry on the Maryland Campaign of 1862.
The rest of the War
He died on 30 April 1863 of an accidental pistol shot aboard the steamer West Wind while in transit to his next post near Nebraska City in the Nebraska Territory.
References & notes
His service from Heitman1 and Henry.2 His role at Antietam from Captain Brown's after-action Report. Death detail from a notice (pg. 1, col. 5) in the Weekly Wabash Express (Terra Haute) of 13 May 1863. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1850. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
Birth
01/18/1835 in ME
Death
04/30/1863; Nebraska City, NE; burial in Woodlawn Cemetery, Terre Haute, IN
1 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, pg. 1009 [AotW citation 29168]
2 Henry, Guy Vernor, Military Record of Civilian Appointments in the United States Army, 2 Volumes, New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1873, Vol. 2, pg. 353 [AotW citation 29169]