Newton Cooper

He was orphaned at age 8 and raised by the Baker family in Macon County, GA. At age 21, then living in Mitchell County, he enlisted as Private in Company F, 6th Georgia Infantry on 4 March 1862. He was promoted to Corporal in December 1861 and to Sergeant, date not given.

He was captured in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was held at Ft. Delaware until transferred for exchange to Aiken's Landing, VA on 2 October 1862. He was exchanged 10 November 1862 and returned to duty. He left his unit without leave to get married in August 1863, and served in Georgia with Company B, 29th Battalion Georgia Cavalry, but returned to the 6th Georgia by April of 1864. He was surrendered at Greensboro, NC on 26 April 1865.

He moved to a farm in Warren County near Vicksburg, MS and became famous as "the Watermelon Man" for his seeds and for producing exceptionally large melons. By 1915 he was living in the Confederate Annex, a group residence at the City Hospital in Vicksburg, and by 1920 in the County Poor House. He died at the home of his daughter Mary Ella at age 81 in 1922.

Service information from Henderson1 and his Compiled Service Record, posted online by Soldiers' Rest. A casualty list for the Regiment printed in the Southern Recorder (Milledgeville, GA) on 21 October 1862 had him as missing in action at Sharpsburg. Personal details from a bio sketch by G-G-Granddaughter Bobbie Beyers Edwards. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Julia Dundreith Bradford (1845-1913) in 1869.

11/11/1840; Baker County, GA

03/30/1922; Vicksburg, MS; burial in Soldiers' Rest, Cedar Hill Cemetery, Vicksburg, MS