WALTER FINLEY SUTTON, a resident of the Fourth District, Bedford Co., Tenn., born in the district in which he now resides, November 25, 1840, son of John and Elizabeth A. (Harris) Sutton, and is of English-Scotch descent. His father was born in Prince William County, Va., March 5, 1775, and died August 5, 1855. His mother was born in Bedford County, Tenn., in 1818, and died in the same county in 1879. His father was married twice, the second time to the mother of our subject, Miss Elizabeth Harris, a relative of Gov. Harris, of Tennessee.
Our subject received a common school education, and has followed farming as his chief occupation. He enlisted in the Confederate service in the Twenty-third Tennessee Infantry and was afterward transferred to the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry, where he served three years. He was in the battle of Stone River, Chickamauga, besides various cavalry skirmishes during the Georgia campaign, and was finally discharged at Atlanta just prior to the general surrender. In the fall of 1865 Mr. Sutton was elected magistrate of his district, which position he has held ever since. December 27, 1858, he was married to Miss Bettie Hicks, of Bedford County, Tenn., born March 13, 1842, and to this union was born one child, William, whose birth occurred October 8, 1868.
Transcribed by Kathryn Hopkins
Goodspeed Publishing Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Maury, Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Bedford & Marshall Counties, Besides a Valuable Fund of Notes, Reminescences [Sic], Observations, Etc., Etc. Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1988.