Wilson L. Bankston

In 1860 he was an 18 year old farmer on his parents' modest place at Centreville in Bibb County, AL. On 15 March 1862, by then married and living in Scottsville, he enlisted there as a Private in Company B, 44th Alabama Infantry.

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

He was sent to Richmond, VA and was in a hospital there by 29 September, then furloughed home for 30 days on 31 October. He was admitted to the CS Army General Hospital in Selma, AL on 11 November 1862, afterward listed as absent without leave to at least October 1863. He was declared a deserter on 8 November 1863 at Cleveland, TN and took an oath of allegiance to the United States on 4 January 1864 at Nashville, TN.

By 1880 and to at least 1900 he was a farmer in Lincoln County, TN. He had retired there by 1910.

His service from the State of Alabama,1 as Willis L. Bankston, and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. He's also on a Sharpsburg casualty list in the Richmond (VA) Enquirer of 17 October 1862. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860-1910; I believe he told postwar Census takers he was 10 years older than he was. His gravesite is on Findagrave, with birth in May 1831, probably in error.

He married Elizabeth Moore in August 1861 in Bibb County. He married again, Adaline Melissa Jones (1833-1912) in December 1864 in Lincoln County, TN and they had as many as 9 children.

c. 1842 in GA

06/27/1916; Lincoln County, TN; burial in Macedonia Cemetery, Skinem, TN