Walter A. Watson

Walter Allen Watson (November 25, 1867 – December 24, 1919) was a Virginia lawyer and Democratic politician who served in the U.S. Representative and Virginia senate.

The first child born after the Civil War to former Confederate Cavalryman Meredith Watson (1841-1893) (of Lunenburg County and Company E of 3rd Virginia Cavalry) and his wife, the former Josephine Leonora Robertson of Nottoway County, Virginia. Watson was born in 1867 at Woodland plantation near Jennings Ordinary (unlike 3 other homes of the same name in the county), which and his paternal grandparents (Robert A.A. Watson and his wife Mary) had bought from the Dupuy family in 1852. The unincorporated community had been named for Col. William Jennings who received a land grant and protected Amelia County settlers from native American raids before the American Revolutionary War (after which the community was placed in Nottoway County).^[1][2] In fact, his great-grandfather Watson had been named a Colonel for Prince Edward County militiamen by then Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson, and fought in the American Revolutionary War.^[3] Both grandparents lived with the young farming family in 1870.^[4] The large family (13 children) lost many members in childhood, at least four in 1889 alone. Two younger brothers survived to adulthood, farmed and lived with Watson and their widowed mother at the turn of the century—Meredith Leon Watson and Henry Hunter Watson—as did many sisters (at least one a schoolteacher) and another small family.^[5] His maternal grandfather, a Nottoway County plantation owner, and possibly of higher social status than the Watsons, had been killed by a slave in 1847, the year of her birth (but her mother remarried, to George Daniel Horner who joined the 18th Virginia Infantry in 1864 as a private), and her 16-year-old brother died fighting for the Confederacy at the Battle of Williamsburg in May 1862. W.A. Watson attended an "old field" school, then Hampden-Sydney College (where one of his elder brother in laws taught) and graduated in 1887. He studied law at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1888 and 1889.

Admitted to the bar in 1893, Watson began his legal practice in Nottoway and adjoining counties.

Watson died of mastoiditis in Washington DC in 1919 at the age of 52. He was survived by his widow and sons. He was interred in the family cemetery on Woodland estate. He had been an amateur historian, and had thought of retiring to finish his historical and natural history reminiscences.

With the assistance of the Virginia State Library, his wife edited his notes, which the state in 1925 published as Notes on Southside Virginia, and which were republished by Genealogical Publishing in 1977, so are not freely available online.^[7]

• 1912; Watson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives with 96.41% of the vote, defeating Socialist Fred Herzig and Independent Robert Turnbull.
• 1914; Watson was re-elected with 96.17% of the vote, defeating Socialist Herzig.
• 1916; Watson was re-elected unopposed.
• 1918; Watson was re-elected unopposed.

• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–49)