TROUP COUNTY, GA - BIOS Seth Tatum

Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm

This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb
Archives by: Typed by Carla Miles


Table of Contents page: 
http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/troup.htm
Georgia Table of Contents: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm


Memoirs of Georgia, Vol. II, Atlanta, Ga., page 930
Published by The Southern Historical Association in 1895


TROUP COUNTY

Seth Tatum, farmer, retired lawyer, LaGrange, Troup Co., Ga.,
son of Peter and Nancy E. (Sledge) Tatum, was born in Putnam
county, Ga., in 1822.  His father was born in North Carolina,
came to Georgia when a young man, married in Hancock county,
and settled in Putnam county.  He was a soldier in the war of
1812.  His wife was born in Hancock county, Ga., in 1795, and
to them these children were born: Mius S.; Holmes; Seth; the
subject of this sketch; A.J.; Matilda; Risilla, and Elizabeth. 
Of these, Mius S. and Seth served in the late civil war.  Mr.
Tatum’s maternal grandparents, Mius and Rasilla (Hamlet)
Sledge, were natives of North Carolina, migrated to Georgia the
latter part of the last century, and settled in the woods in
Hancock county.  He was born in 1767 and died in 1847, aged
eighty years, in Troup county.  Mr. Tatum was reared in Troup
county, and educated in the common schools of the county until
he was thirteen years old, when he went to LaGrange and
attended the high school, of which Otis Smith was principal.
In 1841 he went to Mercer university, where Mr. Smith was
president, and when the president came back to LaGrange, he
came also, and finished his preparatory course under him.  In
1844 he entered Harvard college and took a law course,
graduating in 1845.  While there he boarded at the same house
with ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes.  In 1847 he was admitted
to the bar in LaGrange, and formed a partnership with N.G.
Swanson, which continued until the beginning of the civil war. 
In 1862 he enlisted with Company E., Capt. J.C. Cutright,
Forty-first Georgia regiment, and was assigned to Gen. Bragg’s
command.  He was made ordinance sergeant in the regular service
and received notice of promotion to a lieutenancy, but the
commission never reached him.  He participated in several hard-
fought battles, being in those of Perryville, Baker’s Creek,
and the siege of Vicksburg, where he was captured and paroled. 
At the end of three months he returned to the army, reaching it
just after the battle of Chickamauga.  He was in the battle of
Missionary Ridge, and was more or less engaged from there to
Atlanta and in defense of the city.  He then went with Gen.
Hood into Tennessee and was in all the fights in that campaign,
and followed the fortunes of the army until the last battles of
the war at Bentonville and Smithville, N.C.  Returning from the
war to Troup county he engaged in farming, and has since made
that his life-business.  Mr. Tatum is a man of extensive
information and progressive ideas.  Unambitious of political
preferment he has been content to enjoy undisturbed the quiet
pleasures of domestic life.  In 1890, however, he was elected
to represent his senatorial district in the general assembly
without opposition, a significant indication of the esteem in
which he is held.  Mr. Tatum was married in November, 1865, in
Troup county to Miss Sarah E. Stinson, born in Warren county,
Ga., in 1837, daughter of Michael F. and Martha A. (Hardaway)
Stinson.  Her grandparents, Michael and Elizabeth (McKinley)
Stinson, were North Carolinians; and her father, born in North
Carolina, came south early in life.  Her great-grandfather
Hardaway was killed in the war of the revolution in Virginia
and her great-grandmother died in Virginia nine days after
giving birth to her grandfather, her death being caused by
exposure in consequence of having to be removed beyond the
range of the guns of the British.  Six children were born to
Mr. and Mrs. Tatum: Frank S.; Seth S., civil engineer; James
M.; George H.; Mary K., and Mattie E.  Mrs. Tatum is a
consistent member of the Methodist church.  Mr. Tatum has
through life endeavored to observe the parting injunction to
him of Judge Joseph Story, “When you stand well, stand still.”