Samuel Waddy Fowler was born December 11, 1843 in Union County, South Carolina. He was the youngest son of James Fowler (1793–1858) and Susan Gault (b. 1800). Waddy was the grandson of Godfrey Fowler (1773–1850) and Nancy “Nannie” Kelly (1775–1857).
Samuel Waddy Fowler came from a family with a documented line of military service. His great-grandfather —Henry Ellis Fowler (1746-1808) — was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. His grandfather Godfrey Fowler fought in the War of 1812.
James Fowler –father of Waddy and son of Godfrey — was a widower by 1850. He was head of a household in Union County that included his daughter, Sarah, and his two youngest sons, twelve-year-old James and six-year-old Waddy.
THE FAMILY SCATTERS
Spending most of their lives in Union County, after the death of matriarch Susan Gault Fowler, the James Fowler family scattered to the four winds.
Eight years after the 1850 census, James Fowler was lying in a grave in the Little River Cemetery in Cherokee County, Georgia.
Dr. Wade Fowler (1820-1881), son of James Fowler and Susan Gault, may have been the only one of the Fowler offspring to stay in Union County.
Sons Francis G. Fowler (1825–1866) and Irvin J. Fowler (1830–1878) were in Columbia SC in 1850: Francis was a merchant and Irvin was in military school. Both men had moved by the late 1850s to Mississippi and Arkansas respectively.
Daughter Sarah Fowler moved to Georgia with her father. In 1860, she married James Franklin McCleskey, the Sheriff of Cobb County, Georgia. The McCleskey family moved from Marietta, Georgia to Arkansas in November 1869.
BROTHERS WADDY AND JAMES STAY UNITED
By 1859, brothers James W. Fowler and Samuel Waddy Fowler had traveled 75 miles from their birthplace to the little town of Abbeville, SC. Both men were clerks in the store owned by John Alexander Weir and Augustus Jackson Lythgoe.
John Alexander Weir was born in 1816 in the West Indies. He was the son of John Weir (1781-1849) whose Last Will and Testament named Thomas Chiles Perrin as executor.
John Alexander Weir was the father of Margaret Isabell Weir (1832-1913) who married Augustus Jackson Lythgoe (1830-1862).
Augustus was a son of George Birkenhead Lythgoe (1800-1858) of Liverpool, England.
Thus the store Weir and Lythgoe was named after John Alexander Weir and his son-in-law Augustus Jackson Lythgoe. It may forever be a mystery how the two Fowler brothers ended up in this situation.
Augustus Jackson Lythgoe and his family lived next to his father-in-law John Alexander Weir and his family in 1860. Samuel Waddy Fowler –aged seventeen — was in the household of the Weir family.
Waddy’s brother James W. Fowler married Sarah Cecelia Chalmers in 1860. She was born in 1842, a daughter of Alexander William Chalmers (1792-1862) of Newberry SC.
The newly married couple lived in the 1860 household of Robert A. Fair, an attorney in Abbeville. James W. Fowler was twenty-three years old; his occupation was Merchant Clerk. His seventeen-year-old wife was recorded as “Cath” Fowler instead of Cecelia.
MARCHING OFF TO WAR
Seventeen-year-old Samuel Waddy Fowler joined The McDuffie Rifles, a Confederate volunteer infantry company from the Abbeville District. The company was organized by *James Monroe Perrin.
Born in 1822, James Monroe Perrin was a resident of Abbeville, an attorney-at-law, a planter of cotton, a representative in the South Carolina House, and a seasoned veteran of war, having served in the Mexican War (1846-48).
His involvement with the Civil War began when he was named Captain of the Abbeville Minute Men militia. This company served in Charleston from January to April 1861. He organized the McDuffie Rifles in May 1861, merged two months later into 1st South Carolina Rifles (Orr’s Rifles).
Perrin was commissioned Captain, then promoted to Major on 29 August 29, 1862 and Lieutenant Colonel on September 1st. His final promotion was on November 12, 1862 when he became Colonel Perrin.
Considered Robert E. Lee’s “perfect battle,” the Battle of Chancellorsville reached its climax on May 3, 1863, the bloodiest day of the campaign. Of the 60,298 Confederate troops, the losses for the south were great: 1,665 men were killed; 9,081 were wounded; and 2,018 were captured or missing.
Colonel James Monroe Perrin was one of the 1665 soldiers who would not go home, nor even fight in the next battle. He died that day at Chancellorsville, Virginia. He was buried at the Upper Long Cane Cemetery in Abbeville.
* James Monroe Perrin was the father of Thomas Chiles Perrin:
GLORY, HONOR, AND GOODBYES
The town of Abbeville turned out in droves to send her soldiers off to war. The article below describes the big send off given to the men and boys who had enlisted in McDuffie’s Riflemen. There is a list of names of the officers and privates who were headed to Camp Pickens to join up with Orr’s Rifles.
Samuel Waddy Fowler’s name is highlighted in red.
Samuel Waddy Fowler was with his company when it merged into Company B of the 1st Regiment South Carolina Rifles, known as Orr’s Rifles, organized by James Lawrence Orr at Camp Pickens in Sandy Springs, South Carolina, on July 20, 1861.
Their first assignment was near the Carolina coast at Sullivan’s Island. Sent there at the end of August 1861, their job was to bolster Charleston defenses against Union troops. They were branded “The Pound Cake Regiment” because of their proximity to home and their distance from battles.
The soldiers in Orr’s Rifles were sent to Virginia in April 1862. They fought on the front lines of many difficult battles during the war. They more than proved they had not deserved their earlier reputation of a “light duty”company.
They fought in no less than thirty-four battles, including Petersburg, Gaines’ Mill, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Deep Bottom, Poplar Springs Church, Cold Harbor, and finally, Appomattox Court House.
They were brave soldiers. Most of the brave died on battlefields far from home or in Confederate Army field hospitals from their injuries or disease. The ones who made it back home were lucky, and few.
DEATH OF A SOLDIER
Waddy Fowler would not fight in any Civil War battles. The young man of only eighteen summers would not leave Sullivan’s Island alive. The swampy Carolina coast and her diseases took life away from more than one soldier.
Before the war, Adams Run had been a summer village established for wealthy St Paul’s Parish planters in the 1830s. During the war, it was converted into a hospital for soldiers.
It was here, in the hospital at Adams Run, that Samuel Waddy Fowler died. His death was from disease, and it occurred December 13, 1861, only two days after his eighteenth birthday and six months after he entered military service.
The body of Samuel Waddy Fowler was sent to Cherokee County, Georgia. He was laid to rest in the Little River Methodist Church graveyard next to his father James Fowler who died in 1858.
The stones marking the graves of father and son are broken. Time, weather, and neglect are taking a toll on their final resting place.
It has been one hundred and sixty-five years since Samuel Waddy Fowler died; one hundred and sixty-eight years since the death of his father James Fowler. Their stones will crumble and wash into the earth with each spring rain and every cold winter storm over the next hundred years.
Let us remember them. Let their silence speak through us.
HIS BROTHER, JAMES W. FOWLER … A DIFFERENT PATH
THE FOWLER FAMILIES OF UNION COUNTY, SC 
Thank you for sharing all your hard work.
I always hope someday to read something to put my Aaron Fowler family another step back.
God bless you and stay safe always 🙏 ❤️
Janis
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Hi Janis, Thanks for still reading and commenting! I will keep writing as long as I know someone out there is reading! It has been a long time since I looked at your line. Please email me details and I will research using the “new” AI tool. All I need is a little info on Aaron (what you know, etc). I probably have all this already in my old emails from you, but it will make it easy for me if you would refresh my memory! Hope you are well, so good to hear from you. Deb
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debfowler@aol.com
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