Autobiography
Or some incidents in my life

by
Reverend William A. Edwards
Pate, Texas, 1897

I was born in Talbot County, Georgia on the 28th day of February, 1835. The day is designated in history as the cold Friday. It was the coldest day in the history of that country up to that date and I am sure that it has never been equaled since. It was said that the freeze was so powerful and deep that great trees of the forest burst and many of them died.

My father’s name was Ambrose Edwards. He lived to be eighty-two years of age. My grandfather’s name was William Edwards. He died at the age of eighty-four. I think he was born in the eastern part of Virginia and my impression is that he was the son of Ambrose Edwards.

My grandmother Edwards was Mary Whatley. I know very little of her family. I never saw any near kin on my grandmother’s side of the house.

My father had a house built on his farm to take care of his parents in their old age. They had not occupied it more than a month before my grandmother died and grandfather then lived with his children, making his home with his youngest son, William Edwards.

My grandfather made a profession of religion and received the sacrament on his deathbed.

My father, Ambrose Edwards, joined the Methodist Church at the age of twenty-five years and was one of the best men I ever knew.

My mother was Emeline James Gaulding, the daughter of John Gaulding. She died at the age of seventy-six. My grandfather Gaulding died of yellow fever in Mobile, Alabama when about sixty years old. I never knew my grandmother Gaulding’s maiden name or Christian name. I remember very distinctly seeing my father returning from the post office handing my mother a letter notifying her of the death of her father and the deep grief it produced on her refined and emotional nature. Mother died in the seventy-seventh year and both were buried in Westville, Dale County, Alabama.

My Edwards ancestors were robust in mind and body; were not afraid of anything; they nearly all acquired good property, but none of my father’s family took much to books. On the other hand, my mother was a cultivated woman, about as much so as any raised in her day. The Gaulding family was cultivated and intelligent. Archibald Gaulding, the uncle for whom “A” in my name stands, was one of Georgia’s most intelligent citizens. He was the most fascinating gentleman I nearly ever knew, as neat as a pin, as handsome as Absalom, as polite as Chesterfield, thoroughly educated, he was a man of mark. He served his state in the legislature, was a candidate for governor, but defeated, was for two terms auditor of the state road, and for many years, the State Masonic Lecturer and considered the brightest mason in the state.

I received my strong bodily constitution from the Edwards side and whatever taste or acquirements I may have in literature comes from my mother’s family. I believe that my general knowledge exceeds that of any of my Edwards kin with whom I have met.

At the age of 14 I professed religion at Shady Grove Church in Lee County, Alabama. With my conversion came a clear call to the ministry, neither of which I have ever since doubted.

On the morning of the 5th day of January, 1858 I married Eliza Jones Mizell, the widow of James S. Mizell, and daughter of Theophilus White. We have raised eight children to be grown, two boys and six girls, all of them married. We have 27 grandchildren, six of which died, and as we grow older our life becomes more unified and happy. The names of our children are, respectfully:

Theophilus Ambrose Edwards
Mary James Cora (Mrs. J. A. Skillern)
Annie Lee (Mrs. S. N. Neathery)
Willie Maud (Mrs. T. B. Lester)
Mattie Elizabeth (Mrs. B. L. Jones)
Carrie Louise (Mrs. J. L. Wilson)
Eliza (Lida) Emeline (Mrs. Geo. B. Cochran)
William Archibald Edwards, Jr.

There were no events in my childhood of unusual interest, I was considered forward, egotistical, and full of pranks and mischief, and a superabundance of life. I cared little for books until my conversion and union with the church. From that day until the present books have been my best and most constant companion.

It seems to me now I must have been a boy of unusual endurance. I used to pick cotton all day and then hunt possums and coons with father’s Negroes nearly all night. The first money I ever had was twenty-five cents and I paid it all for a money purse and then wore the purse out carrying it in my pocket and never had a cent to put in it. I next made fifty cents and bought a pistol with that and one day all left home but me and I spent the entire day shooting chickens and never hit one. I then swapped the pistol for an old vest and mother wouldn’t let me wear it. That ended the speculation.

I felt the call to the ministry from the day of my conversion and I suppose I have made some of what the world would call sacrifices to preach. My uncle, for whom I was named, offered to give me a legal profession if I would accept it, but I felt I must preach. When I entered the ministry I was offered a law partnership with a guarantee of $2.500.00 for the first year with every prospect of a large increase and yet I declined it to enter the ministry and I am now at the age of sixty-two more than pleased with my choice. The lawyer that made the offer was in one of two years killed by a stroke of lightning and had I accepted the offer, some ill fatality might have befallen me ere this.

I supposed my war record will interest my family more than my ministry as the family is familiar with the latter.

Early in the summer of sixty I raised a company of volunteers, went to the war as its first lieutenant and was soon promoted to captain in which capacity I served until near the close of the war and received the appointment of missionary to the soldiers, resigned and came home. The immediate cause of my resignation was the promotion of Major Lowther to the Colonelcy, a man I had refused to serve under.

We left home for Virginia the 21st day of June. The day after the Battle of Bull Run was fought; we rendezvoused at the Ft. Mitchell near Columbus, Georgia and was organized in the 15th Alabama regiment as Company “E” and when we reached Virginia was placed in Trumble’s Brigade, Ewell’s Division, Army of Northern Virginia. Law afterward commanded the brigade and General J. B. Hood the division. We were under General Jackson in all of his valley campaigns and cooperated with Lee against McClellan in the seven days fight around Richmond. General Jackson’s forces came from the Valley and struck to the rear of the Federal Army at Mechanicsville, six miles north of Richmond. In this battle General Ewell, I think, saved Lee’s army from being routed by his presence and bravery. The confederates had almost fallen into a panic when the brave old man, with hat in hand, headed the retreating men crying at the top of his voice:

“Men for God’s sake, fight. You must fight, you must fight.”

His presence and cheering words acted like magic. His men rallied a well nigh lost battle. I have never seen this stated in history, yet I always thought this saved the day. There were some incidents of this battle too pathetic not to mention. We slept that night on the battlefield, among the dead and dying. In wandering about in the dark to look for my men I stumbled on a dead man and by some strange impulse I stooped, passed my hand over his face and recognized him to be Andrew Wilson, a young man who had boarded at my father’s and taught school.

I called for a light, searched his person and found on him a fine gold watch, $2.00 in silver, which I sent home to his parents. I also found a cousin, his name was Carlisle, a noble youth and I always thought one of the most handsome men I ever saw. A minie ball had entered his left lung. He was sitting up with his head bowed forward and ever and anon, the gurgling sound told the sad tale that life was rapidly passing away. He was suffering intensely. I asked him if he knew me. He said “It’s Cousin Billie”. I asked him if I could help him and he muttered rather indistinctly “water”. I took a canteen of water from a dead man and I held it to his mouth and he drank freely of it. I saw all was over with him, that I could do no more for him. I left him to struggle alone in the dark with none to soothe or comfort and I have always indulged the hope that an angel carried his noble and brave soul beyond the conflict of armies and the cruelty of war.

There was yet another touching incident in this night ramble among the dead. I had a private soldier, W. C. Robinson, in my Company. He was the son of an old itinerant Methodist preacher of the Alabama Conference. I called out “15 Alabama” and not far off he answered, “here”. I asked “Is this you Billy?” He said, “Yes”. I said, “Are you much hurt?” He replied, “I am killed.” I found a minie ball had passed through the body and that his statement was too true. He said, “Who holds the battlefield”. He faced danger with the chivalry of the bravest knight and death with the placidity of the bravest Christian.

I was on the second (Maurn?) battleground ten days after the battle. No Federal soldiers had been buried. They were in a state of putrefaction and were distended almost to the condition of bursting. Thousands of these poor fellows lay on the ground, in some places I could have walked for hundreds of yards on the dead and Federal troops had turned as black as a Negro which they invariably did in a few hours after they were killed. It was a phenomena the Confederates did not turn black. This was not only a dreary, revolting spectacle, but seen just at night, was a frightful sight.

I saw an old excavation cut in a railroad, hundreds of Yankee soldiers killed together not covered with earth.

The confederates had been buried, but in a small clump of oak trees I found one confederate soldier. Evidently he had been dead but a few hours and, no doubt, he died from neglect and starvation. I paused, looked at the little pile of bones and emaciated manhood and in the sympathy of my soul said here lies a noble dead, perhaps brave and good and yet no marble slab will ever mark his resting place and no wife or mother will ever learn of his painful and lingering death. The battleground was under a flag of truce and that night I slept in some house with at least a dozen volunteers and army surgeons.

We waded the Potomac River to get to the Battle of Gettysburg and returning crossed on pontoons. There are some facts in this battle I have not seen in history. The 15th Alabama Regiment was the extreme right of General Lee’s. Just as we began the attack Hood was wounded and Law took command of the division. Our regiment crept over Big Round Top Mountain and fought until all our ammunition was exhausted and for want of reinforcement and ammunition was compelled to retire.

In this battle I saw General Bulger shot through the body. He fell like a dead man and after the war I met the same gentleman. He was a candidate for Governor of the State of Alabama. I saw Colonel Oates, since Governor of Alabama, mount a rock within thirty yards of the enemy and discharge the contents of a repeater in their face.

When we began the retreat back across the mountains the Federals were pressing and I was exhausted and with my third lieutenant and private soldier, slipped into a cave in the side of the mountain and about midnight came out, located the pickets by the firing and crowded between their post which was about a hundred yards apart and reached our command in safety. I am satisfied I went as far toward Washington as any other Southern soldier.

On many of our campaigns we often waded rivers from waist to neck deep and that we might stem the current we walked, four abreast, and with arms around each other, constituted mutual support. I had a very narrow escape at Suffolk on the southern side of Richmond. I was in command of a long line of pickets and had the advantage of a dense line of timber that covered us from view of the enemy. The line was at least eight hundred yards long and my left wing gave way while I was at the right and I ran in between my own men and the enemy who had then entered the woods and had driven my forces back. I found myself within a hundred yards of a solid line of Federal Soldiers, but as the woods were dense I do not think they ever saw me. I found my command had secured a good position about five hundred yards back and quietly awaited my coming.

The army began its retreat at dark and I was left on duty with orders to withdraw at one A.M. sharp and cover the retreat to Black Water, twenty-five miles, which I did without loss of a man and in perfect order. In that fight I lost several of my best men. One soldier whose name was Cameron was killed and my detailed cook, Jesse Flowers*, carried him back to a camp and his body now rests in an old field pine thicket near Suffolk, Virginia. Flowers met me on his return with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and said, “Captain, they have killed my old mess mate and best friend and I am now ready to fight until they kill me or I kill some of them.” Soon the news came to me that Jesse Flowers was killed. By the side of his friend they buried him. Two braver soldiers never shouldered a musket or wore the Confederate gray. I wish I could indulge in the hope that they might arise with the just. But Flowers was wicked and Cameron, I think, was not religious, so I throw the mantle of oblivion over these two men and await the revelation of the great hereafter.

The three best friends I had in the army or ever had, all met their death in the same way. One was Lieutenant Patten who took camp fever at Manassas in 1861 and was transferred to a hospital at Richmond and soon I received notice he was dead. He was a gentleman of intelligence and a friend that never faltered or flickered. When he left I felt like I should never see him again and too soon my forebodings were realized. He was a wicked man and the last word I ever heard from him before the final farewell was an oath. It is probable he may have had a death bed repentance and from his narrow and crude little bunk gone up to a wider and better berth.

The second was John Trawick. I detailed him as a cook. He was shot accidentally in the foot in the valley near Harper’s Ferry and died in a hospital at Winchester. John Trawick was a poor man, illiterate, unmannerly, profane and dissipated and yet he would do more for me and my comfort than any man living or dead. After the hardest wars and battles he would never sleep, though we might not reach camp until 12 or 1 o’clock at night, until he had prepared my supper, no matter how I protested. I am ashamed to say after the lapse of thirty years how much Mr. Trawick did for me.

Florence was the third and as I have already spoken freely of him, I will let that suffice.

My work as missionary was to the troops of Florida. My headquarters were scattered from the mouth of the Sewanee River to St. Andrews Bay, from Marian to the nearest point on the coast was from fifty to sixty miles and there was but one human habitation between.

I took my wife and oldest child on one trip. We stayed all night at the midway house. It was a pole hut, twelve by fourteen; one room, besides my family there was another family of eleven persons and I have never yet found out how we all slept as the night was cold. One thing I remember, the man took quite a fancy to Mrs. Edwards and gave her a fine venison ham as we returned home. There were many dense thickets or “Tight Eye Swamps” in all that country and served as an impregnable fortress for hostile deserters. I never passed one of these that I did not feel I was in great danger. I expected to hear the deserters’ rifles from these thickets every time I passed them. I suffered far more uneasiness than I did in the regular army.

Returning from one of my tours to the post at St. Andrews Bay I met an army composed of Yankees, Negroes and deserters, they raided Marian, burned a part of the town and killed some of its citizens. It was ten miles out they leveled their guns on me. I thought as I had no weapon and was outnumbered I had better surrender. They carried me ten miles further towards the coast and then took my horse, the best one I ever owned, and turned me loose on foot with a pair of heavy saddle pockets and seventy miles from home and twenty from anywhere else. On foot I started home. Almost the entire way either exposed to danger from the deserters or negroes loafing around, whose owners had run out of the country and they were imprudently occupying it.

In going from my home in south Alabama to the troops in Florida I had a stopping place with a Mrs. Clark. One evening just before sundown I met her and her little girl about two miles from her house. She told me I had better turn back that 300 deserters were camped at her house and they would either kill or badly mistreat me if I went on. I asked her if she could take care of me, she said she would try. I turned, rode back to her sister’s and they held a consultation and decided to send or carry me to Mrs. Reed’s, a deserter’s wife, who lived in the lone pine woods back from the public road. These ladies said if the deserters came to Mrs. Reed’s she would claim me as her guest and save me. Mrs. Reed agreed to take me and do the best she could for me. She lived in a pole cabin with open cracks as large as your arm. She fed me that night on boiled sweet potatoes which was the best and all she had for my horse was peas. It was a bright moonlight night, here was a brilliant fire of lightwood on the hearth and I sat leaning back by a large crack in the chimney corner. I looked out and saw a line of deserters at least a hundred armed with shotguns and muskets coming right to my back. I asked the lady if it would not be safer if I moved. She said that would create suspicion and cause them to stop and if I did not move they would most likely pass on. I don’t think I ever sat so still before or since or covered so little space. That night they attacked the county seat, Newton, fifteen miles away. Four were killed and so many wounded.

After the surrender there were marauders robbing and hanging men friendly to the war and supposed to have money and I had been told I would share a similar fate. So we gave our valuables to our cook, Hogue, among other things a $150.00 gold watch and I took a Negro boy, Lewis, a bed quilt and shotgun and went out in a thicket near the house determined if they came to have the advantage of being on the outside. After we had been up for about an hour I said, “Lewis, I will go to sleep and you watch and if anybody comes you wake me.” “Yes, sah, Marse Billy, if any man hurts you this night he will have to first walk over my dead body.”

I went to sleep and woke the next morning with Lewis sleeping by my side, enjoying a full share of the quilt with me. I never asked Mrs. Edwards how she spent the night, but I guess she was as good to the cook as I was to Lewis. This was the last uneasy night I ever spent on account of war.

The last transaction I ever had in Confederate money I sold a calf skin for $300.00.

I was, at one time, offered a position on the weather bureau with a salary of $1,500.00 and the rank of captain if I would be mustered into service. I declined it. There were times when I had flattering prospects as a preacher, but that is all gone now. I once had offers and temptations to other pursuits, but that is all gone.

An Arab once rode a fine horse in front of an English officer and the Englishman offered him such tempting prices for his animal he galloped away from it to get out of his reach.

So I have gone out of the way of temptations. I have not done it as the Arab, but Old Time has mounted me and has rode me beyond the flattering offers and temptations of the world and now I keep my eye on the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Thirty years have passed.

I am ninety years old today.

I have broken the family record.

My father died at 82 and my mother at 76, a pretty fair record for longevity. Besides my immediate family I have forty-five grandchildren.

One thing dominated me as far back as I can remember, a determination never to grow old, that is never to have old folk’s ways, to be a boy in spirit through life and I do not think I have ever risen much above a boy in any respect. I suppose I have been what the world would call an optimist, that is, a man that hasn’t anything and doesn’t want anything. I think I had my duplicate in an old farmer in Alabama. He had forty acres of $3.00 per acre of land, and a possum dog and said he would not take forty thousand dollars for it. To me every picture of life has two sides and I have always turned the bright side to my gaze. I have always taken a forward look. The fate of Lot’s wife early impressed me with the backward look.

I have preferred Paul’s rule of action, forgetting the things that are behind.

Seventy-two years ago I joined the Methodist Church and my name was never off the church roll or the conference roll since.

I have been preaching sixty-four years and in all these years I have done many things I should not have done and left many things undone. I think I can say today before the Good Father in whose presence I must soon appear I have always been loyal to Christ. I have confessed Him before me. I have taken the Christian side of every moral issue in life that has come before the public for action.

I joined the Alabama Conference and filled pastorates there as follows:

Central Institute, Autaugaville, Ivey Creek, Summerfield and Day. I remained in that conference ten years, then transferred to the North Texas Conference, November 17, 1875. Served the Sulphur Springs Circuit; and Greenville Station. Located in December, 1876. For several years I taught school near Greenville, 1876 to 1880. Farmersville, 1880 to 1884. Lewisville, 1884 to 1886.

In 1886 I was readmitted into the North Texas Conference. My pastoral charges were Collinsville, Mt. Pleasant, Atlanta, Kaufman, Wills Point, Cochran and Caruth, Royse City, Fate, West Dallas, Haskell Avenue and Princeton. Fifty years of my ministry was spent in Texas and thirty-five years of this time was spent preaching in and around Dallas. I have seen the M. E. Church South grow from 455,000 members to two and one quarter million.

On March 1, 1825, I was made Chaplain General of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the United Confederate Veterans which was a distinctive honor to me.

I am proud of my country, my church, and my family and the age in which I live.

My father passed away on December 12, 1926. He had reached the age of 91 years and 10 months.

He preached on his 90th birthday at the Oak Lawn Methodist Church on Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn Avenue.

On his 91st birthday, February 28, 1925, he preached at the Oak Cliff Methodist Church on Jefferson Street.

He was looking forward to preaching at the invitation of Dr. Gregory at First Methodist Church on the corner of Ross Avenue and Harwood on his 99th birthday.

He preached at Lakewood Methodist Church just one week before his death.

He was a frequent writer to the Texas Christian Advocate and to the Dallas Morning News.

A friend has said of him:

“Brother Edwards had all the charm of a cultured Christian gentleman. He was a reader of good books. He thought out the fundamental questions. He wrote with ease and always illuminatingly. He prepared thoroughly his own discourses and he expected the preacher to whom he listened to give a message of strength and clearness. He lived here far beyond the limit of most men, but he lived to the last with full purpose. He was loved and cherished in his own home and by his brethren and friends. He passed on to his glorious crown with God’s grace, resting upon him and with peace and good will abounding towards all men. We shall see him again.”

Mrs. George A. Cochran
2019 Bowser Avenue
Dallas, Texas

William Archibald Edwards Autobiography