Background
Thomas Fenwick Drayton was born on August 24, 1808 at Charleston, South Carolina, United States. He was the son of the younger William Drayton and his first wife, Ann Gadsden.
planter Soldier railroad president
Thomas Fenwick Drayton was born on August 24, 1808 at Charleston, South Carolina, United States. He was the son of the younger William Drayton and his first wife, Ann Gadsden.
In 1828 Drayton graduated from the United States Military Academy and commissioned in the 6th Infantry.
After serving in garrisons at Jefferson Barracks and Newport, Drayton was assigned (1832) to topographical duty.
He participated in the unsuccessful project to build a Charleston, Louisville & Cincinnati Railroad; first as assistant surveyor and subsequently, following his resignation from the army (1836), as resident engineer.
In 1838 he acquired a plantation in St. Luke’s Parish, which he cultivated until the beginning of the Civil War.
Though planting was his chief interest in this period, he occupied from time to time positions of a public, or semi-public, character.
From 1842 to 1847 he was captain of a company of South Carolina militia, and from 1851 to 1852 a member of the state board of ordnance.
For the next three years (1853—1858) he represented his parish in the upper house of the General Assembly.
In 1853 he was elected president of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, which was constructed and successfully operated under his direction until 1861.
Drayton was commissioned brigadier-general in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States on September 25, 1861.
In July 1862 he was sent to Virginia in command of a brigade which, soon after its arrival, was attached to Long- street’s corps. He took part in the engagements at Thoroughfare Gap, Second Manassas, South Mountain, and Sharpsburg but did not acquit himself creditably.
Inconsequence his brigade was broken up, and Drayton himself was detailed as a member of a military court. In August 1863 he resumed field duty but not on the active front. For a time he commanded a brigade in the District of Arkansas and later was in charge of a sub-district in Texas. His last service in the Confederate army was as president of a court of inquiry which investigated Price’s Missouri expedition.
His plantation having been damaged by Union soldiers and in part confiscated by the Federal government, Drayton removed at the close of the war to Dooly County, where he undertook to develop a farm. Though assisted in this enterprise by a bequest of $27, 000 from his brother Percival, his efforts were unsuccessful; and in 1871 he accepted a position as agent of the Southern Life Insurance Company, going shortly afterward to Charlotte.
In 1878 he was appointed president of the South Carolina Immigrant Society.
"He is a gentleman and a soldier in his own person, Lee wrote Davis, but seems to lack the capacity to command”.
Drayton married Catherine Pope. She bore him eight children.
