Samuel Sawyer (24 Jan 1831 – 19 Nov 1919) was the son of Willis Sawyer and Mary McQueen. He moved to Union Parish in the 1850s, and farmed there in 1860. Samuel enlisted in the Phoenix Rifles in the summer of 1861, a military unit that later became Company C, 17th Regiment Louisiana Infantry, Confederate States Army. He was elected 1st Lieutenant of his company in September 1861, and he was present for duty through 1861. After training at Camp Moore in southeastern Louisiana, he went with his regiment to their winter camp in Chalmette, south of New Orleans. They left in early February 1862 to meet Grant's army marching south through Tennessee. Due to exposure from marching through mud in cold temperatures, numerous men became sick, including Sawyer. One soldier in his unit wrote home to Union Parish from their camp at Corinth, Mississippi, on 4 April 1862, two days before the Battle of Shiloh: “Liut. Sawyer is at Henderson yet. We left him there very sick. The last news we heard from him was very unfavorable. I fear that he will die…” Sawyer's illness caused him to be dropped from the 17th Regiment at their reorganization in May. He later joined a cavalry unit and received a pension for his military service to the Confederacy.
In the early 1860s, Samuel Sawyer married Elizabeth Benjamin Taylor (10 Dec 1843 – 15 July 1927). Sawyer lived in the Colson community in southeastern Union Parish, near the modern Rocky Branch community, where he farmed for a living.
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