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Richard E. McWilliams was born in Wilcox County, Ala., December 3, 1845, and died at Camden, Ala., August 25, 1921.

In 1862, when a lad of sixteen years, he volunteered in Company B, First Alabama Infantry, C. S. A. He was taken prisoner at Island No. 10 and when released in the first general exchange at Vicksburg, Miss., he rejoined his regiment. He was with Johnston and Hood in Middle Tennessee and Georgia, and was captured at Franklin, Tenn. He was then confined at Fort Douglas until the end of the war.

Returning to Wilcox County, he settled in Camden and entered into the mercantile business. In November, 1869, he was married to Miss Amelia L. Coats, of Dallas County, Ala., and this union was blessed with ten children, all of whom are now living and there are twenty-three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

For thirty-five years he served his Church and his God as elder and clerk of the session.

No soldier bore the trials and the hardships with greater fortitude or with more zeal and unremitting love for the South and her cause the R. E. McWilliams. In his death the South has lost one of her most loved sons while heaven has one more to join the fast growing camp of the boys in gray.

With Masonic rites he was laid to rest by the side of his wife, who had preceded him twenty years, wearing the Confederate gray, with the gray haired veterans as honorary pall bearers, and the flag of Dixie upon his casket.