Waller Tazewell Patton (15 July 1835-21 July 1863) was a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Waller Tazewell Patton was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1835, the son of congressman John M. Patton, and he was named for Governor Littleton Waller Tazewell. Patton was the great-grandson of Hugh Mercer and the brother of George S. Patton Sr.. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1855, placing second in a class of 16 students, and he became a lawyer in Culpeper and a militia captain before the American Civil War broke out. Patton became an officer in the Confederate States Army when the war broke out, and he became a Lieutenant-Colonel on 27 April 1862. He was badly wounded at Second Bull Run in 1862 and elected to the Virginia State Senate, but he decided to return to his regiment when he recovered. During the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, Patton was mortally wounded when part of his jaw was ripped away by a Union shell fragment, and he died of his wounds on 21 July; his cousin Lewis B. Williams, Jr. was also killed in the assault on Cemetery Ridge. His brother was killed in battle in 1864.