My Genealogy Hound

Reuben Douglass, a prominent farmer and stock dealer of the Eighth District of Sumner County, is a son of Wiley J. and Eliza (Watkins) Douglass, and was born in Sumner County in 1831, being one of a family of five sons and one daughter, four living. The father was of Scotch extraction, born in Sumner County in 1792, and the grandfather, Reuben Douglass, was a native of North Carolina and one of the earliest pioneers of Sumner County. Wiley J. was married twice, first to our subject’s mother in 1819. She was born in Sumner County in 1802 and died in 1832. In 1844 he married Miss Grimm. They had three sons and two daughters. He was one of Sumner County’s most influential citizens and large land owners, and died in 1866. Our subject was raised and educated in Sumner County and in Gallatin, and has always been a farmer and stock raiser, owning 150 acres of good land, six miles northwest of Gallatin. In 1861 Mr. Douglass enlisted in the Confederate Army, Company B, Fifteenth Tennessee Cavalry, under Gen. Morgan, being with him on his famous raid through Indiana and Ohio, and was captured at the same time in 1863, taken to Camp Chase, Ohio, then to Camp Douglas, Ill., and a short time before the surrender was taken to Point Lookout for exchange, but by that time the war closed, and he returned to Sumner County after four years of gallant service. In May, 1881, he married Mrs. Margaret Turney, nee Davis. Politically he was formerly a Whig, and his first presidential vote was for Gen. Scott in 1852, and since the war has been very conservative in politics. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas are active and useful members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. He is well known throughout the county, and liked and esteemed by all as an-upright man and a true friend.