William Anderson Brien (1842 - 1919)

Born 8 Feb 1842 in Smithville, DeKalb, Tennessee, USA

Ancestors

Died 21 Jan 1919 at age 76 in Davidson Co., Tennessee, USA

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Biography

William Anderson Brien, son of Judge Manson Milner Brien and Polly (Tubb) Brien was born February 8, 1842, Smithville, Tennessee.[Hughes] [Yale 1864a].

He died January 21, 1919, Davidson County, Tennessee [TDR], and was buried January 22, 1919, in Lot 182 at Mt. Olivet Cemetery [MtO].

William married Harriet Ann “Hattie” Stokes on June 10, 1862 [Yale 1864a][DM]. She was born February 1842 [Cn1900], and died January 26, 1908, at age 66. She died of Phthisis Pulmonalis (tuberculosis of the lungs) at the County Asylum [NDR V.4, p89]. She was buried January 27, 1908, in Lot 182 at Mt. Olivet Cemetery [MtO].

One of the family traditions stated that a brother of Robert C. Brien, "Richard", was attending Yale University at the outbreak of the Civil War. William A. Brien was called “Dick” (usually a nickname for Richard), and he studied at Yale. After he completed the classical course at the Nashville High School in 1860, he entered Yale, but left without graduating [Hughes] to enlist in the War.

Confederate Battle Flag

May 23, 1861, Nashville, he enrolled for 12 months, as a private in Company A (“The Tennessee Rangers”), 1st Battalion Tennessee Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel Frank N. McNairy.

June 1861, William became part of the same battalion’s Company D (Captain Payne’s), “The Marion Dragoons” [CSR]. The men in Company D were mostly from Davidson County.

July 1861, the battalion joined other confederate forces at Camp Jackson, near Hendersonville, Tennessee. During William's term of service, the battalion was deployed in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi. It did not participate in many battles, but it counted its attack on a Union camp in Laurel Bridge, Kentucky, and its freeing 2000 sick Confederate prisoners held in Booneville, Mississippi, among its honors [CW].

Dick practiced law in Nashville starting in 1863 [Yale 1864a]. In the summer of 1865, he was District Attorney for the City of Nashville [Hughes]. In 1870, William A. Brien was an Assistant Marshall for the Census (a census taker) in Nashville’s 3rd ward [Cn1870].

Dick was a Republican for many years and supported Abraham Lincoln. In 1891, he abandoned the Republican party and became a Democrat. He stated, “I revere the declaration of independence and the constitution of the United States. * * * But now republican iconoclasm threaten their destruction with combines, trusts, monopolies, centralization and monarchy, to say nothing of its national selfishness and arrogancy”… “I feel recreant if I longer remained identified with that party whose mission has been accomplished and which now is attempting to burden my people with odious oppressive and partial laws in the interest of a section of the land.” [DJ]

Dick sometimes ran for political office. Surviving is a primary campaign advertisement filled with good sounding rhetoric.
“Second Edition of my Last Year’s Circular”
May 1, 1903 W.A.DICK BRIEN, Attorney.
“I want the office of City Judge… The office is not for revenue, but for the punishment and reformation of offenders. I believe the law ought to be tempered with mercy. I have had 40 years experience in that Court, hence I think I know how it ought to be run… I have lived and toiled in your midst for the past 50 years, …I was City Attorney in 1863…For the past 15 years I have voted and affiliated with the democratic party. I love its chief principle, “Let the majority rule.” That is the wisest and justest plank that can be put in any platform, political or ecclesiastical, or wherever there is an assembled body of men...”

SON OF WILLIAM A. AND HATTIE BRIEN

Charles Stokes Brien was born July 4, 1863 [Yale 1864a]. He died December 2, 1897, at 302 South Summer [NDI], at age 34, and was buried December 3, 1897, in Lot 182 at Mt. Olivet Cemetery [MtO].

Sources

• Bennett, Anne Selene. The Briens of Nashville. (Lulu Press. 2013) Extracted almost verbatim with permission of the author.
• Sources Key
  • [Cn1870] 1870 US Census
  • [Cn1900] 1900 US Census
  • [CSR] Fold3. Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers. NARA M268 roll 209. Online at Fold3.
  • [CW] Tenneseans in the Civil War: 23rd Tennessee Infantry Regiment. “Tennessee and the Civil War Project” - unit histories are extracted from Tennesseans in the Civil War, Vol 1. Copyrighted © 1964 by the “Civil War Centennial Commission of Tennessee” Online. TnGenWeb
  • [DJ] “Hon. Dick Brien. Renounces the Faith and Joins the Ranks of Sinners.” Daily Journal and Journal and Tribune. Vol. VII, Issue 158, p. 5. Knoxville, Tennessee: Sunday, August 2, 1891.
  • [Hughes] Hughes, Nathaniel Cheairs, Jr. Yale’s Confederates. A Biographical Dictionary. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2008. p. 28.
  • [MtO] Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Nashville, Tennessee. Records of Burials and deaths. Unpublished. Data received directly from Mt. Olivet.
  • [NDI] Nashville Death Index 1884-1913. microfilm Tennessee State Library And Archives
  • [NDR] Death Records Nashville, TN. Microfilm.
  • [TDR] Ancestry.com. Tennessee, Death Records, 1908-1959. Online photos of original death certificates.
  • [Yale 1864a] Supplement to the History of the class of 1864: Yale college (published in 1895) By Yale University. Class of 1864, Charles Greene Rockwood, Jr. Class Secretary 1895-1907 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1907.
• [DM] Dekalb County, TN Marriages 1848-1880. by Byron Sistler and Barbara Sistler. (Nashville, Tenn: 1985). p. 3 Brian, Wm. A. to Hattie A. Stokes 5-27-1862 [license] (6-10-1862) [return/solemnized]