Whitfield, John W.

Born: 1818-03-11 Franklin, Tennessee

Died: 1879-10-27 Lavaca County, Texas

John W. Whitfield, soldier, Indian agent, and politician, attended local schools in his native Tennessee before serving in the Mexican War in 1846. Whitfield was a member of the Tennessee Senate from 1849 to 1853. He was commissioned Indian agent to the Bodéwadmi (Potawatomi) people by President Franklin Pierce in the latter year, confirmed in the role in 1854, and moved to Independence, Missouri to take up the post. Later in 1854 he was appointed by Pierce to the Upper Platte Agency, and the following year Pierce appointed him agent to the Upper Arkansas Indians. Whitfield was elected as a Democrat to be delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives for the Kansas Territory and served between 1854 and 1856 and again from late 1856 to early 1857. President James Buchanan appointed Whitfield register of public lands at Doniphan, Kansas Territory in 1857 and he filled that office for four years. Whitfield was in Texas at the outset of the Civil War and he joined the Confederate Army there, beginning as a captain in 1861 before being commissioned a brigadier general in 1863. He was paroled in June 1865. Whitfield married first, Catherine M. Dansber in 1839. Following her death he married Sarah B. Dibrell in 1853 and had at least one child.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 2049; Robert M. McBride and Dan M. Robison, eds., Biographical Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly (Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives and Tennessee Historical Commission, 1975), 1:788-89; John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 566; Tennessee, U.S., Marriage Records, 1780-2002, 16 April 1839, Maury County; 27 April 1853, Davidson County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2008); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Hickman County, TN, 39; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887), 9:202, 234, 273, 276, 425, 428; 10:375, 406, 434; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Leavenworth County, KS Terr., 230; Brenham Weekly Banner (TX), 7 November 1879, 1:3; Gravestone, Hallettsville Memorial Park, Hallettsville, TX.