Confederatevets.com

Thomas Jackson McCaughan, a venerable Confederate soldier, died on June 20, 1916, at Copita, Tex. He had celebrated in jovial spirit his eighty-fifth birthday just two days previous to an accident which resulted in a fractured hip, from which he suffered intensely for three months. He was a man highly respected and esteemed by the people of his community, largely of the Northern element, though he was an unreconstructed Southern patriot of the purest type. Born in Trigg County, Ky., of sturdy Scotch-Irish stock, he went with his father at the age of seven to Smith County, Miss., where he grew to manhood, developing all the best traits of character with plantation environment. Among the first to volunteer for the war, he joined Company G, 37th Mississippi Regiment of Infantry, becoming second lieutenant of the company, and served in different commands in most of the hardest-fought battles in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia until captured at Nashville with Hood's ill-fated army in the winter of 1864. With other officers, he was sent to the frigid prison on Johnson's Island, in Lake Erie.

Returning penniless and broken in health to a desolated home, he, with the aid of a devoted wife, went to work with Christian fortitude to maintain a large family through the gloomiest rehabilitation period of Southern history. He went to Texas and located near Waco in 1878, later going to Hamilton County and then to Copia for the benefit of his health in milder climate. He was the eldest of five brothers, all Confederate soldiers. Clothed in the gray he loved so well, he was laid to sleep where the Gulf winds blow softly in that borderland of his own sunny South.