Background
William Harrell Felton, the only child of John and Mary Felton, was born in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. His father, who had been a captain in the War of 1812, was a farmer and the boy grew up among rural surroundings.
William Harrell Felton, the only child of John and Mary Felton, was born in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. His father, who had been a captain in the War of 1812, was a farmer and the boy grew up among rural surroundings.
For the purpose of educating their son, his parents moved in 1835 to Athens, seat of Franklin College (as the University of Georgia was then called), from which he was graduated in 1842. Two years later he received his degree from the medical college of the state.
Felton’s nervous system was such that he was unable to bear the strain of a physician’s life.
He therefore abandoned it, and took up farming in Bartow County, whither the family moved in 1847. In 1848 he was licensed as a local Methodist preacher and for nearly fifty years filled appointments without remuneration. As a preacher all accounts say that he was extraordinarily effective. He volunteered as a surgeon during the Civil War and served in a Macon hospital. After the war he became a Democrat, but in 1874 he entered the race for Congress from the 7th District as an independent candidate. The campaign which followed was among the bitterest and most spectacular in the state’s history. Arrayed against Felton were the entire Democratic organization, all the important political leaders, and the press of the district and the state. Singlehanded, except for the great assistance of his wife, Felton waged war on the organization and was successful by a small majority. For many years thereafter he was the leader and inspiration of all those elements which disliked ring rule. Repeating his success in the two following contests, he served in Congress from 1875 to 1881, and there advocated the remonetization of silver. An organization candidate, Judson C. Clements, defeated him for réélection in 1880. Four years after retiring from Congress Felton was elected to the legislature as representative from Bartow County, and served until 1890. Though now a feeble old man, he was full of fire and an antagonist to be dreaded. In the legislature he championed the re-leasing of the state-owned Western and Atlantic Railroad, the disposition of which constituted the principal issue of the day, but at a much larger rental. He also advocated devoting the rental to elementary education. The bill, practically as he drew it, passed after a strenuous fight lasting through two sessions of the legislature. Felton scathingly denounced the convict leasing system, worked for the establishment of a reformatory for juvenile delinquents, was a champion of higher education and was said to have saved the life of the University, of which he was a trustee, 1879-89. He fought and exposed corruption of all sorts, fearing no man, however powerful or well entrenched in the affections of the people.
In 1848 he was licensed as a local Methodist preacher and for nearly fifty years filled appointments without remuneration.
Felton was in early life a Whig and served one term in the legislature (1851) as a member of that party. After the war he became a Democrat.
Felton’s first wife was Anne Carlton of Athens, who died in 1851. In 1853 he married Rebecca Latimer, who was destined to become as well-known as her husband, In My Memoirs of Georgia Politics (1911), Mrs. Felton recounted circumstances very damaging to the reputations of many leading Georgians who had opposed her husband in politics.