Col. William C. Sherrod is a native of Lawrence Co., Alabama -- Son of Benjamin and Talitha Goode Sherrod -- was born Aug 17th 1831. The Sherrods came originally from England and settled in North Carolina. The Goodes, also English, went from Bermuda Islands and settled at Richmond Virginia as early as 1760. The subject of this sketch was prepared for college at Edgefield South Carolina, and received his supplementary education at the University of North Carolina.
In early life he engaged in Cotton planting in Lawrence Co., AL extending his planting interests into Arkansas where -- in Desha Co., on the Arkansas River he is the owner of an immense plantation which annually yields him many bales of the fibrous fabric. He also owns and manages the old homestead in Lawrence Co., AL -- one of the finest plantations in the Tennessee Valley. As was his father in his lifetime, Col. Sherrod before the War was one of the most extensive Planters and slave owners in Northern Alabama.
He represented Lawrence County in the Legislature, session of 1859 and 1860 and was a delegate to the Charleston Convention of the latter year. In the Legislature he was a Union man and distinguished as one of the three members who refused to sign the ordinance of secession. In the Charleston Convention he supported Stephen A. Douglas as he did at Baltimore where he was also a delegate.
Notwithstanding his opposition to secession, after his state withdrew from the federal Union, he did as every other true man espoused the cause of the South and at once volunteered his services in her defense. He was appointed Captain of Commissary for Patterson's brigade of Cavalry and was connected with the service from the first to the last -- participating in many hotly contested battles in Alabama and other Gulf States.
At the close of the War he returned to Lawrence Co. and to cotton planting, and spent his time thereat until 1880. He was a member of the 41st U.S. Congress and had charge of the Southern Pacific Rail Way bill and conducted it to its final passage. During his term in Congress the records show that he devoted his time and his talent to the advancement of internal improvements to the exclusion of political discussion, and the history of Legislation during that period, attest the fact that he was one of the most useful members of that body.
In 1879 he represented the Second Senatorial district in the upper house of the State Legislature and as a member of the finance Committee assisted in framing the revenue bill that piloted the state out of its indebtedness. He came to Florence in June 1883 for the purpose of schooling his children. In June 1886 in connection with W.B. Wood formulated the idea of the Florence Boom. He was one of the originators of the Florence Land & Mining Company, of the W.B. Wood Furnace Co., of which he is Vice President, also of the Florence Coal Coke & Iron Co., of the Florence Tuscaloosa & RR Co., of the Tennessee and Alabama RR Co., the Alabama, Florence & Cincinnati RR Co., the Florence & St. Louis RR Co., in all of which he is of the several board of directors.
To recur to his Congressional record, we find that the Southern Pacific RR bill was turned over to him after it had been abandoned by all others, and that it was placed in his hands at the special request of Gen. Freemont.
Col. Sherrod knew almost intimately every leading man in the 41st Congress and was upon terms of amity with them without regard to politics. To his credit, it may be said that he had at all times labored to promote and rebuild the country, and that he participated not in political discussions.
He was married at Nashville, Tennessee, Oct. 21st 1856, to Miss Amanda Morgan, the accomplished daughter of Samuel Dold Morgan, whose body lies in the Capitol, by order of the Legislature. The wedding ceremony was performed by Rev. Dr. Edgar. ®88
William Crawford Sherrod, a planter, state legislator, and U.S. Congressman (1870-1872), was born August 17, 1831 at the Cotton Garden Plantation in Lawrence county and removed to Florence in 1883 for the purpose of educating his children. He was instrumental in formulating the Florence boom, being one of the originators of the Florence Land, Mining and Manufacturing Company and the Florence, Tuscaloosa and Montgomery railroad. ®15
William Crawford was married October 21, 1856 to Amanda Morgan, daughter of Colonel Samuel and Matilda Morgan. Samuel was an uncle of General John Hunt Morgan who served with the Confederate Army. Amanda Morgan Sherrod was one of the dedicated women leaders of Florence who persisted in the raising of funds to erect the statue of the Confederate solder on the grounds of the Lauderdale County Court House.
Among the many others who have made Wichita Falls their home there is none who have had a more varied and exciting experience than Col. W.C. Sherrod.Wichita Falls Daily Times, May 3, 1910
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Accidentally learning that he had been a member of the Charleston Convention in 1860, and was a member of the legislature of Alabama when the Ordinance of Secession was passed, a Times representative called on Colonel Sherrod and finally succeeded in getting him to give a brief history of his personal involvement with those stirring days which we reproduce below.
As will be seen, Col. Sherrod was of the class of Southerners, who, while opposing Secession, yet when Alabama did secede, went with the South and did his whole duty by active service in the field under General Forrest.
After the war he was elected to Congress from Alabama and served one term declining renomination.
Owing to the constant decline in the price of cotton, which together with a destructive overflow finally swept away his entire fortune, he removed to Texas with his family in 1893, and soon after made Wichita Falls his home where he hoped in the Southwest his children might have a better showing than in Alabama. While in Wichita Falls he engaged in farming and ranching.
In 1899 he was elected Mayor of Wichita Falls but the corporation being declared invalid did not serve.
For years he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party in Wichita County and has also served as county chairman and chairman for the Congressional District.
A strict party man, and usually identified with the wing of the party he has always insisted on the rights of the people to rule untrammeled by bossism and dictation.
While from his age not taking of late years as active a part as formerly, he is a man whose counsel is sought by party leaders.
While a gentleman of the Old South with all its courtly manners, he never for a moment brooded over the losses of the war, but has been actively identified both in Alabama and Texas with the new order of things, and is a great believer in the future of the South.
Now nearly 79 years of age, and probably the sole survivor of the Charleston Convention of 1860, having served in almost every civil capacity from road overseer up to member of Congress, and still interested in everything which affects the welfare of Texas and the South. A typical Southerner and yet, broad enough to rejoice that the wounds of the war are practically healed, and that North and South can meet on equal ground in love for the flag of a common country. Wichita Falls has no citizen who better represents the true patriot than W.C. Sherrod.
--- Personal Reflections in Regard to Secession ---I was a member of the Charleston Democratic convention which convened in 1860; this was a very important period for the South, and the nation as well. I was a member of the Alabama legislature being 28 years of age, and at the time was made a delegate to the State Convention held at Montgomery and there made a delegate to the National Convention that was held at Charleston, SC.
The Alabama convention directed its delegation to withdraw from the convention in the event of the convention refusing to guarantee the right of persons to carry their slaves into the Territories, and they demanded that the government should protect them in so doing. This was not in accordance with the views of Stephen Douglas on the subject of slavery. Mr. Douglas was the foremost candidate before the convention for the presidency -- he advocated the doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty," with which I entirely agreed and endorsed Mr. Douglas' candidacy, but could do him but little good, as I believed that a state convention had a right to instruct its delegates, which instructions I obeyed to the letter.
The delegates failing to get a plank endorsing the Alabama views, agreed to by the Committee on Platforms, withdrew, I think it was on the 23rd day of April, from the convention. We all returned to Alabama. There was a division of the delegations as soon as the withdrawal was accomplished; about one-third of the delegates favored by Mr. Douglas, and the idea of Squatter-sovereignty, and the other two-thirds demanded unconditional protection; one set of delegates were called "Secessionists." The other set "Submissionists." The Secessionists called a convention to meet at Montgomery, Alabama, and the Submissionists called a convention to meet at Selma, Alabama.
Both conventions sent delegates; the Secessionists to Richmond, VA, the Submissionists to Baltimore, Maryland, where the regular Democratic convention had adjourned at Charleston to meet at Baltimore.
So far as I am advised, I am the only living delegate who was at the convention. I could not attend the Baltimore Convention with others who were appointed at Selma. the other delegates who were at Montgomery were appointed to Richmond. The Richmond Convention ultimately adjourned and met at the same time as the other convention at Baltimore, but there were two separate conventions. Douglas was nominated immediately by the regular convention, and Breckenridge by the seceding convention; then, the warmest political canvas imaginable was inaugurated in Alabama. I was still a member of the Alabama legislature and the governor issued a call for a special session of the legislature which met at the same time that the secession convention met at Montgomery. The Secession convention formed a government known as the "Southern Confederacy."
I did not think it best for the South to secede and with two other members never signed the ordinance of secession. I believed that we would have a war that would be disastrous to the South and our best young men would all be sacrificed and the property of the South, which consisted mostly of negroes, would be lost. I had no idea at any time of separating myself from the South, preferring to be with them believing them to be wrong than to be with the Northern army knowing it to be right.
At the beginning of the war I was engaged in special service the most of the time. I was in the last battle East of the Mississippi River which was fought after both Lee and Johnson surrendered. General Forrest, with whose command I was attached, fought General Wilson with about four thousand Confederates; the Federals having ten thousand as fine cavalry as ever followed any command in the line of battle. The last command that I ever received came from General Bedford Forrest in person at the battle of Selma which was to have all the dry grass removed from the breast-works; that it would catch on fire whenever the fire became hot, and smoke us out.
--Copied from History of the Congress of the United States--
William C. Sherrod was born in Courtland, Alabama, August 17, 1831. His ancestors on both sides were active in their sympathies with the Revolutionary war and furnished many soldiers. His father was a large cotton planter and prominent politician and one of the earliest and most active promoters of railroad building in the United States, having projected and built the Decatur and Tuscumbia railroad, and the second railroad built in the United States, and the first railroad built in Alabama.
The subject of this sketch prepared for college at Edgefield, SC, and was educated at Chappel Hill College, North Carolina in 1851 and 1852 under the presidency of Governor Swaine. He afterward engaged in cotton planting, at the same time devoting some attention to politics and was a member of the National Democratic convention held at Charleston in 1860, and of the Alabama legislature in 1858-60 and was one of three members of that body who persistently refused to sign the ordinance of secession; he finally however cast in his fortune with his state and entered the army of the Confederate States. At the close of the war he resumed his occupation as a cotton planter, conducting his operation on an extensive scale. He was elected representative from Alabama to the forty-first Congress (March 4, 1869--March 3, 1871). As a Democrat he served on the commission of Railroads and Canals, and devoted himself untiring industry to the success of the Southern Pacific railroad which carried an appropriation of twenty-seven million acres of land, the largest appropriation ever given any railroad in the United States, and he contributed more to the accomplishment of that end than any other representative in Congress.
-- From History of Public Men of Alabama --William C. Sherrod is a native of Lawrence County, Alabama; son of Benjamin and Talitha Goode Sherrod and was born August 17'th, 1831. the Sherrods came originally from England and settled in North Carolina. The Goodes, also English, were from the Bermuda Islands, and went to Richmond, Virginia as early as 1760.
The subject of this sketch was prepared for college at Edgefield, SC, and finished his course at the University of North Carolina. In early life he engaged in cotton planting in Lawrence, County Alabama, extending his planting interests into Arkansas, where, in Deshay county, on the Arkansas river, he is the owner of an immense plantation, which annually yields him many bales of fibrous fabric. He also owned and managed the old homestead in Lawrence, Alabama, one of the finest plantations in the Tennessee Valley. As was his father in his lifetime, Col. Sherrod before the war was one of the most extensive planters and slave owners in northern Alabama.
He represented Lawrence County in the legislature session of 1859-60, and was a delegate to the Charleston convention of the latter year. In the legislature he was a Union man and was distinguished as one of three members who refused to sign the Ordinance of Secession.
In the Charleston convention he supported Stephen A. Douglas, as he did at Baltimore, where he was also a delegate. Notwithstanding his opposition to secession, after his state withdrew from the Federal Union, he as did every true Southern man, espoused the cause of the South and at once volunteered his service in her defense.
At the beginning of the war he was appointed captain of commissaries for Patterson's brigade of cavalry, and was connected with the service from the first to the last, participating in many hotly contested battles in Alabama and other states. At the close of the war he returned to Lawrence County and engaged in cotton planting, spending his time there until 1880.
He was a member of the forty-first United States Congress and had charge of the Southern Pacific railroad bill, conducting it to its final passage. During his term in Congress his record shows that he devoted his time and his talents to the advancement of the internal improvements to the exclusion of political discussion and the history of the legislation during that period attests the fact that he was one of the most useful members of that body.
In 1879 he represented the second senatorial district in the upper house of the legislature, and, as a member of the finance committee, assisted in framing the revenue bill that piloted the state out of its indebtedness. He removed to Florence in June, 1883, for the purpose of educating his children. In June, 1886, with the Hon. W.B. Wood, he formulated the idea of the Florence Land and Mining Company, of the W.B. Wood Furnace Company, of which he was vice-president; also of the Florence Coal, Coke and Iron Company; the Florence, Tuscaloosa & Montgomery Railroad, of the Tennessee and Alabama Railroad; the Alabama Florence and Cincinnati Railroad, in all of which he is of the several board of directors. To recur his congressional record, we find that the Southern Pacific bill was turned over to him after it had been abandoned by all others, and was placed in his hands at the special request of General John C. Fremont.
Col. Sherrod knew almost intimately, every leading man in the forty-first congress and was on terms of amity with them without regard to politics. To his credit it may be said that at all times he worked to rebuild the country and that he participated in no political dissensions.
He was married at Nashville, TN, on October 21st, 1856, to Miss Amanda Morgan, the accomplished daughter of Col. Samuel Dold Morgan, whose body lies in the state capitol of Tennessee by order of the legislature.
Alabama Department of Archives and History, 624 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, AL 36130
Cavalry:
Sherrod, W. C. 5th Regt. Ala. Cav. Act'g Ass't Commissary Subsistence
Organization of Brig. Gen. Roddey's Cav. Command Nov. 20, 1864
[This information was filed with Chapter No. 2423 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy by Terry Downs Nelson on 30 June 1988 and accepted as proof of Confederate service]
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I am satisfied that the old gun found at the creek, an account of which appears in th Enterprise some weeks since, belonged to a lot of guns furnished to the Militia of Alabama about the year 1833.
At the beginning of the War with Mexico, Dr. Jack Shackelford raised a company of men in and around Courtland to assist the Texans in their fight for independence and to attempt to throw off the yoke of Mexican oppression. He and his Company, after one of the most valiant battles known to history, were forced to surrender at Goliad, Texas. With the exception of Dr. Shackelford, Smith Whitefield, Brooks, and Joseph Fenner, the entire Company was massacred by the Mexicans. Dr. Shackelford was taken as a captive and carried to the City of Mexico, where, on account of his great medical knowledge, he was held prisoner for two years. He soon learned to speak the Spanish language fluently and being small in stature, with a very swarthy complection and straight black hair, he easily passed for a pure Castillian. After two years of imprisonment and suffering, and with the aid of a Mexican woman, he succeeded in making his escape, and made his way back to Courtland, reaching there the night that Dr. McMahon was born. His return was a great surprise as friends and kindred, had mourned him dead for two years, as he was thought to have been murdered with his Company at Goliad. His Company, The Red Rovers, belonged to Fannin's Command.
I distinctly remember, when a child, to have seen a coffin buried with the names of the massacred upon it, and among the names was that of Dr. Shackelford. The coffin which was buried, was placed in a grave just North of the Methodist Church, very near the old north church wall.
A short time after his return to Alabama, there was much excitement over reported Indian massacres. At that time the Indians had not been removed to the Territory and were causing much uneasiness to the people of that section. There was a distribution of arms to the citizens soldiers known as the Militia and a lot of the guns like the old musket described in the Enterprise were sent to Courtland and placed in charge of Dr. Shackelford, I am not sure they were ever called in. As a boy, I remember shooting one of them that was loaned to my older brother, Charles, by Dr. Shackelford. It was an old flint lock musket, with a walnut stock running the entire length of the barrel and with an iron ram rod. I will never forget it, as it was associated with my first gunning. Some one, possibly a Yankee during the war, must have bent the barrel and thrown it in the creek, though the petrification of the wood indicates that it has been in the water a much longer time.
Smith and Whitfield Brooks were nephews of my mother, being the children of her sister, Francis Burt. Another of his nephews was murdered along with Fortunatus Shackelford, a son of Dr. Shackelford.
There were representatives murdered by the Mexicans of almost every prominent family living around Courtland at the time. Had this occurred at almost any town, it would have been a matter of history woven in poetry and song, and the graves forever held sacred. I however doubt if there is now left any thing to mark the spot. So small a community never before or since has made so bloody a sacrifice to aid a struggling republic in throwing off the yoke of oppression. Quite different from the verdict of the civilized world in standing quietly by with folded arms while the Boers are being murdered and plundered of their country and government.
The above letter to the editor appeared in the Thursday, June 28, 1900 Courtland Enterprise.
Information from "Virginia Cousins, A Study of the Ancestry and Posterity of John Goode of Whitby", by G. Brown Goode:
"Major Sherrod was educated at the University of North Carolina, devoted his attention to cotton planting. He was a member of the Alabama Legislature 1859-60 and in 1861 represented the Fifth District of Alabama in the Charleston Convention, which passed the ordinance of Secession, which, however, he did not favor. He served through the war as Commissary of Patterson's Brigade of Cavalry, C.S.A., with the rank of Major. In 1869, he was elected to Congress, serving until 1871, and was the only representative of his party in the 41st Congress who was born in the South.
"Major Sherrod writes as follows of his Congressional record:
"'My father lived ahead of his time. He was the originator and builder of the line of Railroad from Decatur to Tuscumbia around the Muscle Shoals, predicting at that early day tht a railroad would be built from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean, and that his line of road would be a portion of the trunk line, all of which prophecy has been fulfilled. When I was elected to Congress I concluded I would take up his work where he left it off, and conceived the idea of connecting the oceans by railroad over the line built by him, consequently I devoted the whole of my Congressional career to securing the passage of the Texas & Pacific R.R. bill, having the entire charge of that bill, the passage of which has done more to build up the Southern Country than any measure passed by Congress since the war.'" Wichita Falls, Tex. June 18, 1900
Editor Enterprise. W. C. Sherrod