Stockton, William Tennent, 1812-1869

Lt. Col., Confederate States of America.

William Stockton was born in Philadelphia on October 9, 1812. He graduated from West Point as a second lieutenant in 1834. Stockton served in Florida during the Second Seminole War, before resigning his commission in 1836. He settled in Quincy, Florida, operating a stagecoach line and later serving as mayor. In 1845 he married Julia Elizabeth Telfair and together the couple had ten children.

In January, 1861, Stockton offered his services and those of a Quincy cavalry company, the Gadsden Dragoons, to the state. In July, 1861, Stockton received a commission as a major in the First Florida Cavalry. The unit remained in Florida until the spring of 1862, when it was ordered to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Stockton served with the First Florida Cavalry in the western theater of the war during 1862 and 1863. The regiment participated in the Confederacy's invasion of Kentucky in the late summer and early fall of 1862. Following the failure of this campaign, the First Florida Calvary remained in the vicinity of Knoxville, Tennessee during late 1862 and the first half of 1863. The unit was engaged in the September 1863 Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia; followed two months later by the Confederate defeat at Chattanooga.

At Chattanooga, William Stockton fell into Union hands as a prisoner of war. He spent the remaining year and a half of the war in Johnson's Island prison camp, located in Sandusky Bay off Lake Erie. Released in July 1865, Stockton returned home to Quincy. He died there of an unspecified illness in 1869. His wife Julia moved to Jacksonville after her husband's death, where she died in 1892.