William Turner Cathcart
1844-1912

William Turner Cathcart was the fifth son of David and Mary Junkin Cathcart.  He was born on 29 December 1844 near Bloomington in Monroe County, Indiana.¹ 

Autobiography

I was born and reared near Bloomington, Monroe Co., Indiana, almost, if not directly west of town and we always called it 2 1/2 miles.

Following southern style the house was set away back from the road fully a quarter of a mile and our nearest neighbor, a Mr. Bailey, lived just across the road opposite and in full view across cleared fields, lying along the wagon road that led over to our house.

Though most of our outlet was by going directly east to a crossroad or lane leading from the county road north of us next to Bailey's to the county road south of us beyond Eli P. Farmer's farm, which ran the full length of ours on the south. Then we had a wagon road leading due west alongside a new ground field, past an old whipsaw arrangement, but which I never saw in operation. That wagon road led out through what we called the "Forty" a virgin forest much given up to sink holes and fox dens. I can see as plain as if it were yesterday a family of half-grown foxes in one of those big sink holes.

Along the west boundary of the "Forty" ran a pretty fair woods road. This was the road that Sam Weir's boys, John, Dave and Jim, and girls, Mary, Euphemia and Irene² , went to school. We, Lizzie, Lina, Dave, Pressley and Kate³  and I would go whooping diagonally across the "Forty" to join with them down near the Bollman corner. Sometimes we would find they had passed leaving amply scratches in the dust or often a little pile of sticks and brush. Then we would hurry to overtake them.

Well, at last I have located the house about the middle of the farm and a very good one for that section. Here I was born December 29, 1844 in a story and a half log house and which at my earliest recollection had had a liberal addition made to it. On the east had been built a full two story frame addition and the original had been raised a half story to match, no change being made in the kitchen, which oddly enough was on the side next the road. A liberal porch having been built to the new part.

When I was some six or seven years old, Father tore down a tenant house and made a fine big two story kitchen on the south side of the house and tore away the old wide chimnied portion in front and extended the porch the full length of the house.

About this time the railroad was built diagonally across one corner of the farm running about half way from the house to the road next to the Bailey's. But before that time Bailey had moved to Illinois and Hiram Bailey (Millie's father) had moved in. Soon after, father moved the old barn off to one side so that it no longer interposed between the house and the traveling public. This was the house then as I recall it through the years until I entered college.

Father had given some $200.00 to the rebuilding of the State University when it was burned along in the late fifties and I was given the task of using up the scholarship it secured. He died when I was about half through college. Brother Press was appointed guardian for Kate and me, the only two under age.

As I say, I was born December 29, 1844 near Bloomington, Monroe County, and continued to live on the farm until I graduated at the Indiana State University in the class of 1863.

In the meantime I had served a three-month term in Company A, 54 Ind. V.I.. I then taught the home school in the winter of 1863 and in the spring of 1864 the call became too strong to resist and I re-enlisted in Co. F 82nd V.I. in time to take in the entire Sherman campaign from Ringgold (Ga.) to Atlanta and the sea and up through the Carolinas and Virginia. At Washington I was transferred to Co. G 22nd Ind. V.I. and was discharged at Louisville, Ky. at the close of the war.

That winter I again taught the home school and with the opening of the next year, entered the Illinois Normal for special training in my chosen profession which I followed for 27 years, in charge of such schools as Sparta, Georgetown, Pana and Golconda, Illinois. I took the civil service examination at St. Louis, Mo. in 1889 (while teaching at Wyman's Institute, now Western Military Academy, May) and in 1890 was called to Washington, D.C. by a telegram to enter upon service in the Pension Bureau.

From an adjudicating desk in the Eastern Division, I was sent to the field June 20, 1897 and have been retained at Dayton, Ohio, one of the very best districts in the field for over 13 years.

My parents were David and Mary (Junkin) Cathcart of Scotch descent, their parents having lived in County Antrim in the North of Ireland. (Father was born at sea, 3 days out of County Antrim) (I wrote this in for he told me about it years later, May) Landing at Charleston, S.C. they went directly to the northern part of the State (Chester County) some 20 miles from Winnsboro.

Father married Nancy Miller and had three girls who were babies when their mother died. He soon after married his deceased wife's sister's daughter. I do not recall hearing whether this occurred in Alabama or whether he went back to South Carolina for her. My impression is that soon after his first marriage he left S.C. and moved to a farm a mile or two south of Macon, Georgia where he lived a year.

He then went to Selma, Alabama and lived out near the Cahawba River 15 years. I think he sold his plantation there to his brother, Samuel Cathcart (he did, May). Samuel was living after the war and had two children, a boy and a girl. I do not know what became of them. It seems the girl's name was Ann C. and went to school at Due West College but whether she graduated or died, I could not say.⁴ 

(Father wrote this in the hospital while recovering from a prostate operation. Soon after recovery, he was transferred to Sedalia, Missouri where health failing he asked to be sent back to Washington and desk work in the Pension Building. Unable to continue working, he took leave of absence and came to Fayetteville, Tennessee just before Thanksgiving, 1912 to be with me. Mother was already there. Our loving care and nursing could no longer keep him with us and he passed away in his sleep early morning, December 23, 1912. After his funeral in the U.S.A. Presbyterian Church, he was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, his pallbearers being Confederate soldiers. He was a precious, Christian father. - May Cathcart Thomas)

Footnotes

1. This autobiography was written by William T Cathcart.  The comments in parentheses were added by his daughter, May Cathcart Thomas (1882-1965, married Morley Elisha Thomas, Sr), who also transcribed the original for distribution to her siblings.  Information provided by David Quay in an online family tree posted on Ancestry.com.
2. Samuel Weir (1811-1859) first married Elizabeth Strong and together they had...John, David, James, and Euphemia—perhaps they also had Irene and Mary; I have yet to find them in any census or online family tree.  After Elizabeth's death, Samuel married William's half-sister, Mary Winford Cathcart (1824-1905, daughter of David and Nancy Miller Cathcart).
3. William's siblings—for a complete list, see David's page. 
4. 1. "Out near the Cahawba River." The town--and former capital of Alabama, now mostly abandoned--of Cahawba is located where the Cahawba flows into the Alabama River.
   2. Note that William does not mention his uncle John. This omission lends credence to the assertion that Mary, Samuel, and David's brother, John Cathcart, did indeed "disappear in a SC swamp as a teenager." This is important when trying to figure out who was the John Cathcart purchasing land in Dallas and Wilcox counties in Alabama in 1834 and 1837.
   3. Sadly, William (or his daughter May) fail to mention David's parents after their arrival in America.  My current research leads me to believe that David and Samuel's father (William's paternal grandfather), John Cathcart, did indeed arrive in South Carolina and made it with his two sons to Dallas County, Alabama.  For more information, please see the Alabama page.