Sergeant John William Watson
Sergeant John William Watson, born in the Brooke area about 1831, was in Company “I”(3), (“Stafford Guards”), 47th Virginia Infantry. He had married a Falmouth girl, Margaret Garner, in 1854 and they had three children. Enlisting in 1861, he was a corporal by July or August. Present on all muster-rolls through December 1862, Watson was wounded (right thigh) at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. Admitted to Richmond’s Chimborazo Hospital in July, he had survived the Peninsula Campaign; Cedar Mountain and 2nd Manassas; Harpers’ Ferry and Sharpsburg (both September 1862); Fredericksburg; and Chancellorsville. Watson returned for the Mine Run Campaign (November 1863), where he developed what became a fatal illness. Pneumonia sent him to a Lynchburg hospital, where he died on May 3, 1864, and was buried. Watson’s letters are in the Virginia Historical Society.
