William Stewart Simkins

William Stewart Simkins (August 25, 1842 – February 27, 1929) was a Confederate soldier and professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Early life Simkins was born on August 25, 1842, in Edgefield, South Carolina. His parents were Eldred James and Pattie Simkins. He entered the Citadel, a South Carolina military academy, in 1856.

Civil War At daybreak on January 9, 1861, Simkins saw the signal from a guard boat, and sounded the alarm in the sand battery, alerting his fellow Citadel cadets to the arrival of the Union ship the Star of the West, which was attempting to ferry supplies to Fort Sumter. The cadets fired the first shots of the American Civil War. The Daily Courier at first said he had fired the first shot, although the official account later blamed a local youth named G. E. Haynesworth. Simkins once said he only loaded the gun which fired the first shot, though many historians believe that he actually fired it, too.

The cadets were graduated early on April 9.

He was commissioned as a first lieutenant of artillery. He is mentioned on September 19, 1863, as the inspector general for General Hagood. Simkins surrendered as a colonel in the army of Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina in 1865.

Professorship Simkins joined the law faculty of the University of Texas in 1899.

Simkins was himself nicknamed "Old Peregrinoos." First-year law students were known as "Simkins's Jackasses," and later by the initialism J.A.

He became professor emeritus in 1923, but continued to lecture once a week until his death. There is no evidence to suggest he joined the second Klan that had reorganized in Georgia in 1915 and became a power in Texas in the 1920s. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Dallas.

Legacy On the University of Texas campus, Simkins Hall dormitory was, for a time, named in his honor. The two-story dormitory was constructed near Waller Creek in the 1950s. Next door to the law school where Professor Simkins made his intellectual mark, it was originally the law student dormitory, but later moved into common undergraduate use.

In 2010, UT changed the name to Creekside Residence Hall after Professor Thomas D. Russell, a historian and former professor of law at UT, published a paper chronicling Simkins's role as the co-founder of the Florida Ku Klux Klan. University President William Powers, Jr., endorsed the change on July 12, 2010. The regents also changed the name "Simkins Park", a green space next to the dormitory which had been named for Simkins's brother, Eldred James Simkins.

Personal life Legendary Sewanee Tigers football player Ormond Simkins was his son.

Partial bibliography

Equity as Applied in the State and Federal Courts of Texas (1903) Contracts and Sales (1905) Administration of Estates in Texas (1908) A Federal Suit in Equity (1909) A Federal Suit at Law (1912) Title by Limitations in Texas (1924)