Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/249

 History of Quitman Rifles. 241

of the State on April 21, 1861, with Samuel A. Matthews as captain. The company was attached to the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment under Colonel Carnot Posey, and served through the war in Virginia.

In a few more years the remnants of this company will have passed into the unknown, where all the heroes who figured in that great conflict have gone, and it has been determined by them to have this relic of theirs framed and deposited in the Hall of Fame at Jackson, with a suitable record of those instrumental in its pre- sentation and return to them.

Pike county sent out eleven companies, besides Garland's Battalion, into the Confederate service.

Preston Brent, who organized the Quitman Guards in 1859, also organized the Brent Rifles and took them out in 1862. He became colonel of the Thirty-eighth Mississippi Regiment and was severely wounded at the siege of Vicksburg, in 1863.

Thomas R. Stockdale, who acted as one of the escorts to the young ladies at the presentation of the banner,, was major of the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment the first year of the war. He after- wards raised a cavalry command and became lieutenant-colonel of the Fourth Cavalry. At the close of the war he resumed the practice of law and married Fanny Wicker, one of the maids of honor at the banner presentation. He was subsequently elected to Congress and served several terms, when he was appointed Supreme judge of Mississippi by Governor McLaurin.

H. Eugene Weathersby was a graduate of Centenary College, La., in a class with Judge T. C. W. Ellis, of the Civil District Court, and went out as a lieutenant in Captain John T. Larrikin's company, organized at Holmesville in 1862, of the Thirty-third Regiment, and was killed at the battle of Franklin, Tenn., Novem- ber 30, 1864. He was a son of Dr. Solomon Weathersby and Martha Jane Bennett, of Amite county. His grand-parents were immigrants from South Carolina, and came to the territory of Mississippi early in 1800, and settled in Amite county.

The little girl, Miss Norma Dunn, chosen to return the banner to the survivors, is a granddaughter of Captain S. A. Matthews and daughter of H. G. Dunn, of the firm of Dunn Bros., merchants of Summitt, who married Mamie Mathews.

Captain John Holmes, of Picayune, the last captain of the Ouit- inan Guards, received the banner.