Fulton-Meriwether-Lowndes County GaArchives Obituaries.....Dowling, William Henry Taylor  November 6, 1948
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
William McDonald williamteomi@yahoo.com June 2, 2008, 11:18 pm

The Atlanta Constitution, Sun. Nov. 7, 1948
           GEN. DOWLING, GRAY VET., LAST IN SOLDIERS HOME, DEAD

  Gen. William Henry Taylor Dowling, 99 year old Confederate veteran, lost a 
gallant battle with death yesterday.
  The "General," last veteran living at the Georgia Confederate Soldiers Home, 
died in a local hospital after a 10 day fight with pneumonia. He would have 
been 100 years old in January.
  Funeral services will be conducted at 3 PM today at the Moreland Avenue 
Church of Christ, with Rev. W.D. McPherson officiating. Burial will be at 
1230 PM tomorrow in the Manchester Cemetery.
  The General was a lad of 16 when he marched out of Lowndes County to join
the Confederate Army. He wasn't a general then. "I was too young; just a 
private," he once said. But he became a "general" three years ago, a full
80 years after the conclusion of "The War of Northern Aggression," when he was 
elected Commander in Chief of The United Confederate Veterans at their annual
reunion in Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
  Gen. Dowling lived in Valdosta after the war, and married Miss Georgia 
Hayes. He was a farmer and Church of Christ minister, serving many small 
churches around Valdosta.
  "He was a great singer in his younger years," said Mrs. Lora Slote, the
General's daughter. "He always loved pretty singing and pretty girls."
  Gen. Dowling moved from Valdosta to Manchester, where he lived 22 years,
and lived in Griffin a few years before coming to the Confederate Soldiers
Home seven years ago.
  Only two Confederate veterans are left in Georgia now. They are W.J. Bush,
103, of Fitzgerald, and W.J. Brown of Carrolton, who declined to give his
age, but who must be pushing the 100 year mark. 
  There are 13 Confederate widows living in the Soldiers Home, and 700
throughout the state.

"For his character so exemplary, so patriotic, so God-fearing, we thrill to
honor him here."

Additional Comments:
Gen. William Henry Taylor Dowling was the last Confederate veteran who resided 
in the Soldiers Home in Atlanta, and one of the final National Commanders of 
The United Confederate Veterans.

He was featured on the cover of The Atlanta Journal Magazine in April 1945 
with a lady Marine sergeant. The caption read, "Soldiers Both."

Gen. Dowling's biography may be found in the volume, "The South's Last Boys
in Gray."



File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/fulton/obits/d/dowling11833ob.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/gafiles/

File size: 2.9 Kb