American author, born in Powelton, Hancock Co., GA, on the 8th of March 1812. He was graduated from Mercer University, Georgia, in 1841, and subsequently was admitted to the bar. He filled the chair of literature in the University of Georgia until the outbreak of the Civil War, and then moved to his country home, near Sparta, GA, and opened a boys’ school. In 1867 he removed his school to Baltimore Co., MD. Besides contributions to periodicals, he wrote Dukesborough Tales (1871), A History of English Literature, in conjunction with W. H. Brown (1872); Life of Alexander H. Stephens (1878), Old Mark Langston (1884); Two Gray Tourists (1885); Mr. Absalom Billingslea and Other Georgia Folk (1888); Ogeechee Cross-Firings (1889); Studies, Literary and Social (1891–92); Mr. Billy Downs and His Likes (1892); Little Ike Templin (1894); Old Times in Middle Georgia (1897); Pearse Amerson’s Will (1898). He died in Baltimore, MD, on the 23rd of September 1898. See also “The Early Majority of Mr. Thomas Watts.”
