Boatwright,-James, Captain-Text: p.88 Confederate Veteran February 1900.-
We record the death of Capt. James Boatwright, Company B, Fourteenth South Carolina Regiment, McGowan's Brigade, of Ridge Spring, Edgefield County, S. C. He was born in Columbia, S. C., January 18, 1833, and died September 13, 1896. His grandfather Boatwright, for whom he was named, was one of the earliest settlers of Columbia, and one of its wealthiest and most prominent citizens. To his mother's people were granted in colonial times most of the Ridge lands of Edgefield County, S. C. His great grandfather Watson was an officer in the revolutionary war, and was buried with military honors. An uncle of Capt. Boatwright's uniformed a company of Hampton's Legion, C. S. A. It was originally known as the Watson Guards. Capt. Boatwright was well educated. He was a cadet at the South Carolina Military Academy at Charleston. At the age of twenty seven years he left his wife and child on a lonely, isolated plantation and went as lieutenant. In the battle of Ox Hill, Va., the captain was wounded and resigned, when Lieut. Boatwright became captain. He had many narrow escapes from death. His first service was on the coast of South Carolina. The Yankee gunboats were shelling Port Royal. He was standing in the road and saw the shell coming. Fully expecting to be killed, he turned sidewise, the shell passed him, blackening and bruising his limbs and tearing off the skirt of his new jeans coat, the cloth of which had been woven on his mother's plantation. This shell killed four men. Capt. Boatwright saw hard service in Virginia. At Spottsylvania during the battle a man was lying with his head against Capt. Boatwright's knee, when a cannonball took the man's head off, leaving Capt. Boatwright spattered with his blood and brains. Among the hard fought battles he passed through were the Wilderness, Fredericksburg, Cedar Mountain, Bull Run, the second Chancellorsville, Spottsylvania, at Petersburg on both sides of the James River, seven days' fight around Richmond, and the three days' battle at Gettysburg. At the battle of Gettysburg Capt. Boatwright's company went in with fifty four men, and after the three days' battle reported eight men for duty. The company had sixteen men killed on the field of battle, and every officer wounded except Capt. Boatwright, who was in command of the regiment at the close of the battle. The gallant Gen. Abner Perrin, in his account of the battle of Gettysburg, says: "Capt. James Boatwright was distinguished for uncommonly brave conduct in this battle, as I can testify from personal observation." At the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox, Va., Capt. Boatwright stuck his sword up in an old stump and made his way home on a black horse which had been captured from the Federal army at Spottsylvania. It belonged then to Dr. Hugo, surgeon of the Fourteenth Regiment. Caesar, the faithful man servant of Capt. Boatwright, considered himself one of "the boys," for many a lark did he go on with them. He ever had an eye to the welfare of "Marse Jimmie." He was twice married, and left seven sons and four daughters. The home life of Capt. Boatwright was beautiful. He loved his home beyond all places on earth, his wife and children constituted his world. He was a man of few words, no pretenses, sincere, and unostentatious. He was to his children a companion and friend. In middle life he enlisted under the banner of the cross in the Protestant Episcopal Church.
