The Collierville company Merritt Brown joined in 1861 fought through the Western Theater from Shiloh to Nashville. Most of its men were wounded, captured or lost along the way; many never came home.
Raised at Collierville in the spring of 1861 and enrolled at Germantown on May 15, the Wigfall Grays became Company C of the 4th Tennessee Infantry under Capt. R. P. Bateman. The regiment numbered 963 men, rank and file, when it was organized.
When the regiment reorganized in the spring of 1862, after Shiloh, the company elected Wiley T. Cargill its captain. Its first lieutenant, W. O. Capers, was killed at Perryville on October 8, 1862. Among its other officers were Lt. James T. Biggs and Lt. William T. Abington, a son of one of Collierville's largest landowners, who moved to Arkansas after the war. Thomas L. Taylor rose through the ranks to first sergeant.
The regiment fought at Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, through the Atlanta Campaign, and at Franklin and Nashville. It had 512 men present for action at Shiloh. So many were lost that in December 1862 it was consolidated in the field with the 5th Tennessee; Company C was paired with the 5th's Company H under Captain Cargill, though separate rolls were kept. By April 1865 what was left of the 4th and 5th together made up a single company of the 3rd Consolidated Tennessee, and scarcely a man in it was without a gunshot wound. The survivors were paroled at Greensboro, North Carolina, on May 1, 1865. Merritt Brown was not with them; he was paroled in Alabama on May 11.
Under the law, each company's enlisted men chose one of their number. Six companies of the 4th Tennessee made a choice:
Sergt. J. B. Wendall, Company B · Corpl. M. R. Brown, Company C, the Wigfall Grays · Private R. L. Matthews, Company E · Private G. M. Whitson, Company G · Sergt. J. F. Seay, Company H · Private R. W. Mullins, Company I
General Orders No. 131, October 3, 1863; Official Records, Ser. I, Vol. 20, Pt. 1, p. 975.
The Morton Museum of Collierville History preserves a master roster of the company, written out in the 1890s, with eighty-six names and a note on each man's service and fate. The National Park Service's soldiers' index lists about 128 men under Company C, so the roster is not complete. Ten men of the company lie in Magnolia Cemetery with Merritt Brown; their stories are on the Magnolia page. What became of the rest is on the Battles pages.
The story of Corporal Merritt R. Brown, the Wigfall Grays and their town is told in An Honor Unearned: From the Streets of Collierville, Tennessee, to Edgefield, South Carolina, by Michael Louis Meece. Available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. More about the book at anhonorunearned.org.