Capt. Wm. B. Walton

FROM THE PUTNAM COUNTY HERALD 19 Aug. 1908 [Vol. VI, No. 29, Page 2]

Transcribed By Mitzi P. Freeman

Walton, Capt. William B. 1824 - 1908

Capt. Wm. B. Walton died at his home near Nashville recently.

The death of Capt. Walker leaves but one survivor of that splendid Regiment that marched out from Tennessee under William B. Campbell -- Thos. Pentecost. Capt. Walton was the last surviving officer of the regiment.

He was born in Carthage, Smith county, Tennessee, April 19, 1824. His grandfather, William Walton, founded the city of Carthage, donating the ground upon which the courthouse and other public buildings were built. He also built the old Walton road, which was a noted highway through portions of that county in old times, and upon the line of which much of the Tennessee Central railroad was afterward built.

In 1846, when the war broke out between the United States and Mexico, Capt Walton raised a company of volunteers in Smith county, which constituted one of the companies in the famous regiment commanded by Col. Wm. B. Campbell (afterward governor), which regiment justly won the soubriquet of the "Bloody First," the name that has always attached to it. On the bloody field of Buena Vista this regiment, side by side with noted regiment of Mississippi Rifles, commanded by Col. Jefferson Davis, was even in the forefront on the sanguinary field, and won the highest encomiums from the commander-in-chief, Gen. Zachary Taylor. This regiment afterward participated, conspicuously, in all of the important engagements of Gen.

Taylor in Mexico, and later, under Gen. Winfield Scott, in his march on the city of Mexico, and was present at the capitulation of that city, when the American forces entered the halls of Montezuma.

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