The Tennessean, Dec. 26, 2007, p. B-1

 Descendant Fulfills Rebel Soldier’s Wish

       His revised Civil War classic published

 By Leon Alligood

              Ruth Hill Fulton McAllister never met her great-grandfather, Sam R. Watkins.

             But more than 100 years after his death, the Columbia woman has completed her ancestor’s life work.

             McAllister is the editor of a new version of Co. Aytch, the frank Civil War memoir that is considered a classic in the genre and was quoted several times in Ken Burns’ PBS documentary The Civil War.

             Sam, as she affectionately calls her father’s grandfather, was the author of that book, subtitled, A Side Show of the Big Show.

            Watkins originally published the slim volume in 1882 when he was settled into middle age, more than 20 years after he joined the Maury Grays and marched off to pursue Yankees.

            By 1892, Watkins had completed a new version of his manuscript, whose title comes from the former soldier’s over-pronunciation of his unit’s designation, Company H.

            He tried to raise several hundred dollars to publish the new edition.

            “Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful,”  McAllister noted.

            That task was left to her.

            McAllister grew up in Columbia and does not remember a time when the words of Sam R. Watkins were not a presence in her life.

            She was in the eighth grade when she read Co. Aytch closely.  “I was so blown away because it was so graphic and gory.  Well, I was going, ‘This can’t be true.’

            “So I went to my dad in the other room and I said, ‘Do you think that Sam Watkins is telling the truth?’”

            Her father, the late Franklin Fulton, was Maury County Clerk and Master for many years.   He vouched for his grandfather’s veracity.

            “From then on I was interested,” she said.

Notes scribbled on pages

             According to McAllister, her ancestor had scribbled many additions and changes in a copy of the 1882 book she inherited.

            “He had written notes in the margin and had crossed out some things and changed some names, corrected things.

            “A couple of people had told me this could be republished with these additions,” she said.

            Instead, she wanted to use her great-grandfather’s notes in a book she was writing about Watkins’ life before and after the war.

            Initially, she discounted the value of another edition of Co. Aytch because there had already been more than a dozen printings, the last in 2003.

            Her intention was to use Watkins’ handwritten notes in her book, but, as she wrote, McAllister said her act seemed more like pilfering than creating.

            “It took me a while to come around to the conclusion that the best way to use his quotes was to go on and republish the book,” she recalled.

Deletions were difficult

            The task took her three years, working on it when she could from her job as a producer on her husband’s nationally syndicated radio show for teens and young adults, Dawson McAllister Live.

            “We had to take the original publication and add the new stuff, indicating what was new,” she said, noting that was the easy part.

            More difficult were the deletions Watkins made.

            “He’s not here for us to ask him why he crossed through a certain paragraph.

            “He may have been editing to improve what he had to say, or he may have been trying to shorten the book to save money,” McAllister said.

            In addition to the changes indicated by Watkins, the book, published by Providence House Publishers, includes several dozen photographs, many of them from the family’s collection that have never been published before.

            Filmmaker Burns wrote a book jacket blurb that praises the new edition.

            “The only thing better than Sam Watkins is more Sam Watkins,” Burns is quoted.

            Through the process McAllister has developed a greater fondness for the Confederate in her genealogical closet.

            He died in 1901, at the age of 62, from an undiagnosed malady that caused him to be ill for the final year of his life.

            His great-granddaughter believes he died disappointed, feeling his Civil War memories would be soon forgotten.

            “I know that he would be astounded at the notoriety he gets now,” she said.

            A farmer by trade, Watkins possessed a journalist’s eye for detail and a philosopher’s searching voice, his great-granddaughter observed.

            “He liked to write, but he never made much money,” she said.

            Stories are his legacy “and we’re the richer for having them.”

Contact Leon Alligood at 615-259-8279 or at lalligood@tennessean.com.