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R.K. Felder
(1840 - 1922)
Home State: Texas
Education: Soule University
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 5th Texas Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
His father died when Rufus was about 7 years old, leaving a substantial estate, and at age 15 he went with his mother to Texas in 1855. In 1860 he was a 19 year old living with his widowed mother Catherine, 3 siblings, and 76 slaves (of whom he owned 35) on their prosperous plantation, chiefly in cotton, near Washington in Washington County, TX.
He was a student at Soule University at the start of the war, and he enlisted at Washington, TX on 19 July 1861 and mustered as a Private in Company E, 5th Texas Infantry.
On the Campaign
He was with his company in Maryland and in action on South Mountain on 14 September and at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
Except for brief periods of illness he was with his unit to the end of the war and he was surrendered and paroled at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865.
After the War
He returned to Texas and ran his mother's plantation until 1871, when he bought land of his own at Chappell Hill in Washington County. By the end of his life his estate comprised more than 800 acres, two-thirds of it in corn and cotton. He also started a hardware and lumber business in 1910, and helped found and was vice president of a local bank. He was still farming in 1920, then 80 years old.
References & notes
His presence in Maryland in 1862 from Schmutz,1 citing a letter Felder wrote his mother on 23 September 1862. Service details from his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1920, and a bio sketch in Frank W Johnson's A History of Texas and Texans (Vol. IV, 1916). His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph with his cousin Miers now in the Texas Heritage Museum, Hillsboro, TX.
He married Margaret Eliza Matthews (1847-1884) in November 1868 and they had 8 children. She died in childbirth with their last, in February 1884, and Rufus married again, Mary Loula Virginia Nelson (1865-1942) in 1885 and they had 4 more.
His cousin Miers Martindale Felder (1832-1899) enlisted with him in 1861 but was wounded by a gunshot at Manassas, VA on 30 August 1862 and was discharged for disability in February 1863. Miers married Rufus' sister Catherine (1837-1869) in December 1863.
Birth
09/02/1840; Orangeburg, SC
Death
09/06/1922; Galveston, TX; burial in Atkinson Cemetery, Chappell Hill, TX
1 Schmutz, John F., "The Bloody Fifth" The 5th Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood's Texas Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia, El Dorado Hills (CA): Savas Beatie, p. 11, 221 [AotW citation 32609]
2 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 32610]