This page is dedicated to known body servants and slaves who were attached to the 1st Tennessee Infantry at some point during the war.  All served in the capacity of body servants and there is nothing to support they ever fought in battle.  A newspaper article in the October 22, 1896 issue of the Maury Democrat Newspaper, states there were around 50 body servants in the 1st Tennessee Infantry.  Of these only the names of nine are known.  Four are known because they applied for a Confederate pension, three were found in newspapers, and two are known because of 1st Tennessee writer Sam Watkins.  While none of these men fought on the front lines, they were attached to the regiment and therefore deserve mentioning.  Some of the men’s identities and dates of service are unknown.  For example, Sam Watkins mentions he brought a body servant named Sanker and he mentions that Colonel Feild had a servant named Whit.  Generally slaves took the last names of their former masters, so it is assumed that the names of these two men are Sanker Watkins and Whit Feild.  Nothing has shown up pre or post war for anyone with these names possibly for different reasons such as both of them died shortly after the war, their first names were misprinted, or as in the case of Ephriam Otey they were not serving their legal owner and therefore had a different last name.  The hope of some of this research was to get a common demographic or pattern for most of the body servants but because of how most of the names were attained that is not feasible.  Of the nine known, six stayed, two ran away, and one is unknown.  Also of the nine, five were teenagers when they were attached to the army, one was over 20 years old, and three have unknown birthdays.  Using these statistics alone one can draw the conclusion that most of the servants stayed and were teenagers when they served, but the source of the names needs to be considered.  In 1921, Tennessee passed a law that former body servants could draw a pension on the condition that they could prove they served their master loyally.  So any former servant who had run away could not apply.  Second, servants who were very young during the war would most likely have been the only ones who would have been alive in 1921 to apply for a pension.  If the man was 30 years old in 1861 would have been 90 years old when he could apply for a pension.  The older ones had a higher chance of not living to 1921.  Since almost half the known names were obtained from pension records, we get a flawed sample. Why are not more of the body servant’s names known?  While one might say they were not mentioned due to reasons of prejudice, the probably bigger reason issue is most 1st Tennessee soldiers did not record their experiences during the war.  There were over 1,000 men who served in the regiment, yet there are only a handful of memoirs.  There are very few full memoirs such as “Company Aytch” by Sam Watkins, “Privations of a Private” by Marcus Toney, and the Memoir and Diary of Chaplin Quintard (which is more than other regiments), but most writings on the 1st Tennessee came from small excerpts in the Confederate Veteran Magazine, the Southern Bivouac Magazine, or local newspapers.  A body servant would not have followed his master into battle and most likely would not have accompanied him on most excursions that a writer went on.  Since soldiers typically wanted to discuss their combat experiences or some event that would interest a reader, and their body servant (if they had one) probably was not involved and thus not mentioned.  The second big reason is most of the regiment did not bring slaves with them.  As previously mentioned, one 1st Tennessee soldier stated there were about 50 body servants out of a regiment of over 1,000 men.  The Confederate government did not supply rations or supplies for body servants, so if a soldier brought one with him he had to clothe and feed them at his personal expense.  Whether that meant paying out of his own pocket or splitting what he was issued.  Depriving the servants of basic necessities would either entice them to runaway to Federal lines or their health would fail and they would not be able to serve their masters.  It would stand to reason a soldier would find more reason not to have a body servant than to have another mouth to feed.  The chances a soldier actually recorded their experiences is fairly slim, the chance a soldier had a servant is slim, and the chance they recorded their experience and had a servant is even slimmer.  One final disclaimer, some of the original documents may come off as offensive to modern readers.  While the ‘N’ word is never used, the writers sometimes mimicked the way the slaves spoke.  Click on any of the names below learn about each one.  If names of others appear in future research, they will be added to this list. Campbell, Ike Cunningham, Osborne Feild, Whit Ledbetter, Ralph McEwen, George Otey, Ephriam Ridley, Daniel Watkins, Sanker Webster, Washington