Confederate Biography :  SAMUEL A. WILLSON, Cherokee County, TX  

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Submitted by Susie McFarland Lemin slemin46@yahoo.com
Nov. 3, 2001
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TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson, pg. 152 

Samuel A. Willson, of Rusk, was born in San Augustine county, Texas, 
Jan. 9, 1835.  After receiving a good academic education he studied 
law in the office of Hon. M. Priest of Woodville, Texas, and in 1852 
when but seventeen years of age he was admitted to the bar by 
authority of a special act of the legislature.  In 1856 he was, at 
the age of twenty one years, elected district attorney of the fifteenth
judicial district and two years later was re-elected.  He entered the 
Confederate service in May, 1862, as frist lieutenant of a company 
in the First Texas Infantry; and in 1862 was promoted captain, 
serving in the army of Northern Virginia until the battle of 
Gettysburg in which he was taken prisoner.  He participated in the 
battle of Manassas, and the battle of Sharpsburg, in the last of 
which he was severly woundded.  At the close of the war he returned 
to the practice of his profession at Woodville, where his great 
success as a prosecutor having already established his reputation 
as an able lawyer, he was in 1866 elected district judge.  In 1868 
when the state was placed under military rule he resigned the office 
and removed to Rusk, in Cherokee county.  In 1879 he was appointed 
by Gov. Coke one of the committe to codify the laws under the new 
constitution and the revised code owed much of its merit to his 
genius and experience.  In the spring of 1882 he was appointed by 
Gov. O. M. Roberts one of the judges of the Court of Appeals, and 
in the fall of that year was elected to the same position by the 
people and served in this high capacity until his voluntary 
retirement Feb. 1, 1891.  He was married at Woodville in 1853 to
Miss Susan E. Priest. Their son Hon. Priest Willson, of Rusk, is 
a lawyer of great ablility.  Judge Willson died Jan. 24, 1892 and 
is buried at Rusk.