October 13, 1971
Click below and learn what was happening at the Rutherford County Historical Society, October, 1971
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From this edition:
The Yankee soldier who had a ball
Elbert Watts entered the Union army as a one-year volunteer on August 31, 1864. A native of Geauga County, Ohio, he became attached to Company E, 177 Ohio Voluntary Infantry. His unit spent some time near Murfreesboro where it engaged the enemy during a threatened attack on Fortress Rosecrans. Later, the regiment moved to North Carolina and, near Goldsboro, during a brief skirmish, Private Watts was wounded in the right lung, the hall so deeply imbedded
that it could not be removed. Subsequently, Watts was a semi-invalid and a periodic patient in Ohio hospitals.
In 1887, after some years in the Nebraska Soldiers and Sailors Horne he came to Rutherford County. During one of
the old soldier’s coughing spasms (1895) the ball was dislodged and ejected through his mouth! This occurred in 1895.
Private Watts was seventy-one when he died in 1919.
He was the father of A.M. Watts, Manchester Road, and the grandfather of Allen and Howard Watts of Murfreesboro.