Thomas Drayton
He married Emma Catherine Pope in 1832. Four years later, Drayton resigned from the army and became a civil engineer for railroad construction in Charleston, Louisville, and Cincinnati for two years before returned to plantation life. While a state senator, he also was President of the Charleston & Savannah Railroad from 1853 until 1856. With the coming of war, Jefferson Davis, the new President of the Confederate States of America, appointed Drayton as a brigadier general in September 1861 and placed him in command of the military district at Port Royal, South Carolina. At the Battle of Port Royal later that year, troops under his command at Fort Beauregard and Fort Walker came under attack by ships of the Union Navy, including the USS Pocahontas, commanded by his brother, Percival Drayton.Drayton was president of the South Carolina Immigrant Society until shortly before his death in Florence, South Carolina, at the age of 81. Drayton is commemorated by a historical marker erected in 1985 by the state of South Carolina near Hilton Head in Beaufort County. The Drayton family property, Magnolia Plantation, is a modern tourist attraction near Charleston, South Carolina, and is still owned by the family after 15 generations. . Thomas Fenwick Drayton (August 24, 1809 – February 18, 1891) was a plantation owner, politician, railroad president, and military officer, serving in the United States Army and then as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Drayton was a native of South Carolina, most likely born in Charleston.
Infantry. Drayton was elected to the South Carolina state legislature and was an outspoken supporter of states rights and slavery.
He was the son of a prominent lawyer, soldier, and politician William Drayton, who eventually relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a captain in the state militia for five years.
In 1871, he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and sold insurance for a living. Drayton was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 6th U.S.
After a lengthy bombardment, both forts fell to the Union attackers, who subsequently occupied much of the region, giving the North its first deepwater port in coastal Carolina. In 1862, Drayton was assigned command of an infantry brigade composed of the 15th South Carolina Infantry, the 3d Battalion S.C. Inf.
and three Georgia infantry regiments, the 50th and 51st and Phillips Georgia Legion Following the surrender of Confederate forces in the spring of 1865, Drayton moved to Dooly County, Georgia, and resumed farming. His grandfather, William Drayton, Sr., was a prominent state and Federal judge. Drayton was an 1828 graduate of the United States Military Academy, where he was a classmate of Jefferson Davis, who became his lifelong friend.
Thomas Drayton s son, Lieutenant William Drayton, also fought in defense of the forts.
