WHITFIELD, JOHN WILKINS (1818–1879). John Wilkins Whitfield, Confederate officer and delegate to two Texas constitutional conventions, was born in Williamson County, Tennessee, on March 11, 1818, son of Wilkins and Mary (Sturdivant) Whitfield. In 1838 he married Catherine Charter. He served two terms in the Tennessee state legislature, from 1848 to 1851. He was married a second time, to Sarah B. Dribrell, in April 1853. The couple had two children. Around 1853 Whitfield moved to Independence, Missouri, when he was appointed Indian agent to the Pottawatomie Indians at Westport, Missouri. In 1855–56 he served as an agent for the Arkansas Indians, during which time he also represented the territory of Kansas in the United States Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth congresses. In 1856 Whitfield commanded an unsuccessful invasion of Missouri citizens into Kansas to rid the state of abolitionists. From 1857 to 1861 he was registrar at the land office at Doniphan, Kansas. Whitfield purchased 1,500 acres on the Navidad River in Lavaca County, Texas, in 1860, following the example of his brothers, who had moved to Texas several years before. In August 1861 he enlisted a company of Confederate cavalry that became known as Whitfield's Rifles. He became captain of the Twenty-seventh Texas Cavalry of the Confederate Army and later commanded Whitfield's Legion, which was composed of 339 troops stationed in Arkansas. After the war Whitfield settled on his estate in Lavaca County. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1866 and to the Constitutional Convention of 1875; in the latter he was chairman of the committee on education, which advocated direct taxes for school purposes and the establishment of a university for Texas with a branch for black students. In 1868 Whitfield became a member of the state executive committee of the Democratic party. He died near Hallettsville on October 27, 1879.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Paul C. Boethel, On the Headwaters of the Lavaca and the Navidad (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1967). Mrs. Harry Joseph Morris, comp. and ed., Citizens of the Republic of Texas (Dallas: Texas State Genealogical Society, 1977).
