DUCKWORTH, Alexander (Captain)

Capt. Alexander DUCKWORTH, clerk and master of the chancery court of Brownsville, Tenn., and native of Haywood County, was born March 16, 1832, son of William W. and Mary M. (ALEXANDER) Duckworth, natives respectively of South and North Carolina. Robert W. Duckworth, the Captain’s grandfather, came with his family to Tennessee from North Carolina early in the twenties, and settled near Knoxville. He settled in Madison County, and in, or before, 1830, located in Haywood County, where he died. Here William W. was married and settled. He raised a family of nine children — three sons and one daughter now living: William L., Thomas N., Martha A. (widow of C. F. SMITH), and Alexander who is the eldest. The father died April 8, 1859, followed by the mother’s death the following day.

Capt. Duckworth’s boyhood days were spent in his native county, where he secured a good academical education chiefly by his own exertions. He prepared himself for teaching, and followed that profession until 1859, then began managing his father’s farm. Here he resided until 1862, then joined the Confederate Army, serving as lieutenant and afterward as captain of Company L., Seventh Regiment Tennessee Cavalry, and was seriously wounded in the right arm in a cavalry skirmish at Collierville, Tenn., and has never fully recovered. Capt. Duckworth served with distinction until the close of the war, then returned home and resumed farming and teaching, and resumed the study of law which he had begun in 1858. In 1867 he came to Brownsville and engaged in the study, and later the practice of law.

November 14, 1870, he was appointed clerk and master of the chancery court, of Haywood County by Chancellor James Fentress and held the position continuously under the various chancellors to the present time. He has always been an unswerving Democrat in politics and has taken an active part in the local campaigns of the county. He is a Royal Arch Mason and has been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church since 1846.


Goodspeed Pub. Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present; Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Lauderdale, Tipton, Haywood and Crockett Counties, Besides a Valuable Fund of Notes, Original Observations, Reminiscences, Etc., Etc. Nashville: Goodspeed Pub. Co, 1887.

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