Lawrence Houston Scruggs

In 1860 he was a successful 23 year old merchant in Huntsville, AL - partner in the mercantile firm White, Scruggs & Robinson. He enlisted there on 7 May 1861 as a Private in Captain Tracy's Company which became Company I of 4th Alabama Infantry and was appointed Commissary Sergeant on 3 June and First Lieutenant on 19 August. He was elected Captain in September 1861, reelected 21 April 1862, and was wounded at Malvern Hill on 1 July.

He assumed command as senior officer present after Lt. Col. McLemore was wounded at Fox's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862. In his Report Colonel Law wrote

[at Sharpsburg on 17 September] the Fourth Alabama pushed into the wood [East Woods] in which the skirmish had taken place the evening previous and drove the enemy through and beyond it .... Captain Scruggs commanding the Fourth Alabama received [gunshot] wounds while discharging his duty.

He was furloughed from a hospital in Richmond, VA on 26 September for 30 days. He was promoted to Major on 30 September 1862 and to Lieutenant Colonel two days later, and commanded the Regiment at Gettysburg in July 1863. He was wounded for the third time in action at Chickamauga, GA in September 1863 and afterward commanded the regiment to the end of the war. He and his regiment were surrendered and paroled at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865.

He was again a merchant, in the cotton business in Huntsville as Scruggs, Robinson, & Foster to 1871, afterward in Landman, Scruggs & Company (later Landman & Co.) to late 1887. He was then partner in Murray, Scruggs & Company, a stock and bond broker and real estate agency in Decatur, AL.

Service details from the OR 1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860, a bio sketch in Smith & DeLand's Northern Alabama - Historical and Biographical (1888), and his obituary in the Huntsville Weekly Democrat of 2 August 1905. His gravesite is on Findagrave. The picture is from a photograph taken by Anderson & Webb, Huntsville, AL in October 1862, from the Alabama Archives3.

He married Mary Emma Cooley (1854-1919) in Nashville, TN in October 1871 and they had 7 children.

06/13/1836; Livingston, AL

07/29/1905; Nashville, TN; burial in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Nashville, TN