General Richard Waterhouse

WATERHOUSE, RICHARD (1832-1876). Richard Waterhouse, Confederate army officer, was born in Rhea County, Tennessee, on January, 12, 1832. As a teenager he ran away from home to join the army during the Mexican War, but rejoined his family to move to San Augustine, Texas, in 1849. There he engaged in the mercantile business until the outbreak of the Civil War, whereupon he helped to raise the Nineteenth Texas Infantry in and around Jefferson and was elected colonel of the unit on May 13, 1862. He served under generals Thomas Carmichael Hindman and Theophilus Hunter Holmes in Arkansas and under Richard Taylor in Louisiana. In Henry E. McCulloch's brigade of Walker's Texas Division at the time of the battle of Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, Waterhouse distinguished himself, McCulloch reported, "not only by a gallant and desperate charge over the levee" but by driving the enemy "to the very brink of the river and within short and direct range of the gunboats of the enemy." After transfer to William Read Scurry's brigade, Waterhouse fought at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill and was promoted to brigadier general in 1864. He subsequently took over command of the brigade formerly commanded by generals McCulloch and Scurry. After the war Waterhouse speculated in land in San Augustine and Jefferson. A fall down a flight of stairs in a Waco hotel on March 18, 1876, resulted in a severe case of pneumonia that proved fatal only two days later. Waterhouse is buried in Jefferson, Texas.