William Judd Fetterman was the son of Lieut. George Fetterman, who entered the army from Pennsylvania, served at Fort Trumbull, Connecticut, from 1829 to 1833, and while stationed there married Anna Marie C. Judd, daughter of Bethel Judd of New London, on April 18, 1831. His mother died in his infancy, and no record of his youth appears to be available.
He entered a school in Bergen, New Jersey, and later went to Princeton, where he remained for a considerable time without registering in the college.
Here he studied privately, music, French, drawing, and fencing. He soon went back to New York where he studied for a while longer before returning to Georgia.
He entered the army, from Delaware, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 and was twice brevetted for gallant and meritorious service, at the battle of Murfreesboro and again at the battle of Jonesboro. After the war he continued in the regular army, York City and went there to live.
Another of the three sons was Ignatius, a captain in the Revolutionary army, and afterward a successful planter and merchant. When Ignatius, Jr. , was about fifteen he was despatched to New York to be educated under the supervision of his uncle William. In Augusta, he turned his attention to law.
In 1815 he went to Savannah as colonel of a regiment intended to save the town from an expected attack by the British, but the enemy did not appear. During the years following he gave himself passionately to general reading, and even to the writing of poetry, in which “he evinced a talent which would have done him honor, had graver pursuits permitted its cultivation” (Sprague, post).
By 1823 his business had pretty well disintegrated and he went to Augusta to practise law. In the autumn of 1824, it became plain that he had tuberculosis, and from then on, “frequent discharges of arterial blood from his pulmonary vessels, sometimes alarmingly rapid and profuse, continued to appear through the several subsequent years of his life (Summers, p. 308).
For a number of years he had grieved his friends by avowing himself a skeptic, but about this time he became open to religious conviction. In 1826 or 1827 he joined the Methodist Church, in 1828 he became a minister, and in the time before 1835, when he was retired, he preached in Savannah, Columbus, and Macon.
As early as 1832 he was convinced that the Methodists of Georgia should conduct a college of their own, and began urging them to such an enterprise. There was little sympathy with his project, and he made a temporary compromise with himself by furthering, under Methodist control, a secondary school in which the students supported themselves by laboring on a farm.
In 1837 the college he had advocated was chartered under the name Emory. He was made its president, and it was located near the farm-school already in operation. The first session began in 1838.
The president’s financial problems were from the first grave, but he would not be bound by anything so inexcusable as lack of funds. He had $100, 000 in subscriptions signed by prominent Methodists, and that seemed to him justification for erecting the really necessary buildings and also for aiding the farm-school, which was itself was transferred on September 21, 1866, to the 27th Infantry with the rank of captain, and sent out to Fort Phil Kearny, Wyo. , to report to Col. Henry B. Carrington, in command at that post. He arrived at his station in November.
He was of genial and dashing personality and at once became popular socially and with the subordinate officers and men. He was not familiar with frontier conditions or with Indian warfare and held rather a contemptuous view of the conservatism of his superiors and their manifest belief in the difficulty of the situation.
On one occasion he declared that he could ride safely through the Indian country with eighty men (Hebard and Brin- instool, post, I, 305). Consequently, when upon the morning of December 21, 1866, an Indian alarm was signaled from the outlook, on Sullivan Hill, although Fetterman was the senior captain in the post, Colonel Carrington directed Captan J. W. Powell to take command of a troop of eighty men and go out to relieve the wood train, then upon its last trip for the season, to the forest upon Piney Island seven miles distant. When this order was given to Capt. Powell, Fetterman at once stepped forward and asserted his seniority.
Colonel Carrington, recognizing his right, with misgivings conceded it, but with distinct orders, several times repeated, under no circumstances to pass beyond the crest of Lodge Trail Ridge.
So it was that Fetterman rode away with precisely the number of men that he had boasted would be sufficient to carry him safely through the Indian country. In disobedience to his orders he allowed Red Cloud to entice him beyond Lodge Trail Ridge where an ambush was prepared for him. There, fighting most gallantly, he with his entire command was killed; not a single white man survived.
The Fetterman massacre has gone into history as one of the great tragedies of the frontier, only surpassed by the fate of Custer ten years later.
In 1826 or 1827 he joined the Methodist Church, in 1828 he became a minister, and in the time before 1835, when he was retired, he preached in Savannah, Columbus, and Macon.
In Augusta, he turned his attention to law, but about 1811 he married Selina Carr, and retired to an extensive farm not far distant.
