Samuel R. Watkins was born on June 26, 1839, near Columbia, Tennessee. He enlisted in the First Tennessee Infantry, Company H, at the beginning of the Civil War. Upon surrender, Watkins was one out of only seven men remaining from the 120 originally enlisted in his regiment. Sam was encouraged by friends and family to write down his memories. First run as a newspaper series, his memoirs were put into book form in 1882 and almost immediately hailed as an important Civil War work.
