Stoker, William Elisha

William Elisha Stoker was an ordinary Texas farmer who found himself caught up in the turmoil of the Civil War. Stoker was born in Alabama in 1837 and lost his father when he was only a small child. His mother remarried to a man named McKissack, and the extended family soon moved to Georgia and then east Texas where they farmed and owned slaves. In his early twenties, Stoker met and married a young woman named Elizabeth or Betty. In 1860, they had a daughter Priscilla born just after the presidential election that resulted in Abraham Lincoln's victory. The records are unclear, but the couple may have also had a son named Enoch who died as an infant in 1862. That was the year that William Stoker entered the Confederate army, but again, the records are uncertain and appear to suggest that he had been drafted into the 18th Texas Infantry, Company H during the spring of 1862. Stoker’s unit was part of General John Walker’s Texas Division which soon developed a reputation as one of the toughest fighting forces in the Trans-Mississippi region. Stoker saw action during the Vicksburg and Red River campaigns and was apparently mortally wounded at the Battle of Jenkins Ferry in 1864. Confederate Private William Stoker left behind a collection of more than thirty letters that vividly described his wartime experiences and repeatedly expressed his deepest desire to return to his wife and daughter in Upshur County. (By Matthew Pinsker)
Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Flavel C. Barber (Class of 1850) was a Confederate soldier and diarist who also served in the Vicksburg campaign and other engagements in the western theater
    Full name
    William Elisha Stoker
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Estimated
    Death Date Certainty
    Estimated
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    South
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    Family
    Elizabeth Stoker (wife), Priscilla Stoker (daughter)
    Occupation
    Military
    Farmer or Planter
    Relation to Slavery
    Slaveholder
    Military
    Confederate Army
    Household Size in 1860
    3
    Children in 1860
    1
    Occupation in 1860
    Farmer
    Residence in 1860
    Marital status in 1860
    Married

    William Elisha Stoker, Civil War (Lowe, 2004)

    Scholarship
    Once [Stoker’s division was] thrown into active campaigning in the spring of 1863, they marched and fought and maneuvered on a steady basis, seeing new places, setting up new camps, facing the terror of combat, and generally remaining active soldiers for the remaining two years of the war. That first winter in Arkansas, though, was their dark night of loneliness.

    The division included more than the usual share of married men and letters to wives flowed in a steady stream from Arkansas to Texas. William E. Stoker, a farmer from the Coffeeville community of Upshur County in northeast Texas, wrote his wife even before winter set in that he was aching for home: “Betty, I cant express my feelings when I think of you and Priscilla [his young daughter]. My heart leaps, but at the same time being so fare off and cant come home and see you it almost makes my heart break.” Stoker kept his wife’s letters, but when he looked at them in moments alone, “I cant keep from weeping about you, feeling so loley bye your self.” To make matters worse, he had to face the possibility that he would never see her again.
    Richard Lowe, Walker’s Texas Division C.S.A.: Greyhounds of the Trans-Mississippi (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 47-48.

    William Elisha Stoker, Children (Lowe, 2004)

    Scholarship
    What [soldiers] feared most – other than the possibility that they might never see their wives and children again – was that their young children would forget them while they were away. Dozens of letters pleaded with wives to remind the children of their father, to show them a portrait… Private Stoker could not bear the thought that his beloved Priscilla might drift away from him: “Write if Priscilla has forgot me or not.” Five months later the possibility still gnawed at him. “I want to see you so bad I am nearly ded & the thoughts of Priscilas forgetting me, hurts me.”
    Richard Lowe, Walker’s Texas Division C.S.A.: Greyhounds of the Trans-Mississippi (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 58.
    Date Title
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, August 27, 1862
    - William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, September 7-8, 1862
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, October 3, 1862
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, October 12, 1862
    - William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, November 4-5, 1862
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, November 15, 1862
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, December 6, 1862
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, December 13, 1862
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, December 21, 1862
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, January 22, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, February 4, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, February 28, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, March 30, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, April 12, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, May 22, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, May 29, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, June 17, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, July 14, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, July 18, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, July 29, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, August 8, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, August 26, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, September 16, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, October 2, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, October 20, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, December 15, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, December 28, 1863
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, January 3, 1864
    William Elisha Stoker to Elizabeth E. Stoker, April 6, 1864
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Blessington, Joseph Palmer. The Campaigns of Walker's Texas Division. New York: Lange, Little & Co., 1875.
    view record
    Glover, Robert W., ed., "The War Letters of a Texas Conscript in Arkansas." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 20, no. 4 (Winter 1961): 355-387. view record
    Lowe, Richard. Walker’s Texas Division C.S.A.: Greyhounds of the Trans-Mississippi. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Stoker, William Elisha," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/26183.