Samuel Hudson Whitworth

Son of a wealthy Methodist Episcopal minister, in 1860 he was a 17 year old student living with his parents, sister, and grandmother Hudson at Brookhaven in Lincoln (now Lawrence) County, MS. He enlisted on 30 March 1861 at Brookhaven and mustered as a Private in Company C, 12th Mississippi Infantry at Corinth, MS on 12 May 1861. He was appointed 5th Sergeant sometime after February 1862.

He was wounded in the chest in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was in hospitals and on furlough due to his wound and with pneumonia to about March 1863, then back with his Company. He was captured at Petersburg, VA on 2 April 1865 and a prisoner at Point Lookout, MD until he was released on 22 June 1865 after taking an oath of allegiance.

In 1870 he was back in Brookhaven, MS, but in 1880 was a farmer in Leflore County, MS. He was probably the leader of a group of 50-100 riders responsible for the Carrolton Massacre of March 1886. In July 1888 he was involved in a dispute with his neighbors which devolved into shooting at Rising Sun, a small railroad station on his land near the Yazoo River, and was killed, probably in revenge, just over a year later.

His service from his Compiled Military Service Records,1 online from fold3. His Sharpsburg wound on a casualty list in the New Orleans Times-Picayune of 29 October 1862. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1880, the Yazoo Herald of 13 July 1888, the Vicksburg Evening Post of 16 July 1888, and the Brookhaven Leader of 29 August 1889. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Mary E Wharton (1852-1905) and they had 6 children between 1872 and 1888.

His father Milton Jacob Whitworth (1811-1870) founded Whitworth Female College in 1858 in Brookhaven, MS. It has been through a number of incarnations, including as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War, and is now the Mississippi School of the Arts.

See a slightly post-war photograph of him from family genealogist Keaton Bryan over on the behind AotW blog.

06/25/1843; Brookhaven, MS

08/23/1889; Leflore County, MS; burial in Hoskins Family Cemetery, Brookhaven, MS