By: Mildred Perry Miller

Mildred Perry Miller — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:40:21 +0000

Captain Wilson Parks Howell was the brother of my great
great grandmother, Melinda Howell, who was the daughter of
an outstanding and well-belove Methodist minister named John
Wesley Howell. As a United Methodist and a Christian, I have
often wondered why southern Christians, and especially Meth-
odists would participate in such a bloody war when they, them-
selves were not slave owners. Anyway, Captain Howell was
wounded four times. He was in every battle of Army of TN
except at Franklin, when he had been furloughed to go back to
his home county, Calhoun, later Cleburne, to collect clothing and horses and other necessities for his Company I. Captain
Howell, like his father, was a Methodist minister and bey the
end of his parenting, he was the father of ten children. He was
partially educated but one of the smartest men in Alabama for
his time, having served in the Alabama Legislature as Senator
and Enrolling Clerk. He was very popular in his bailiwick. I am
proud on my kinship to him but wish he had not been invovled
in killing in a war. When the war was over, he was in a hospital
in Virginia, suffering wounds, but he walked most of the way
back to his home in Alabama on crutches.

Comments on: 25th Alabama soldier tells story of Battle of Murfreesboro

By: Mildred Perry Miller