William Stewart Simkins

Infobox Person
name = William Stewart Simkins


image_size =
caption = Photographed as a young cadet
birth_date = 25 August 1842
birth_place = Edgefield, South Carolina
death_date = 27 February 1929
death_place = Austin, Texas
occupation = Professor of law
spouse = Lizzie Ware

William Stewart Simkins (1842–1929) was a professor emeritus of law at the University of Texas at Austin. As a young military cadet, he quite possibly fired the first shot of the American Civil War. [cite book
title=Texas Cemeteries: The Resting Places of Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Interesting Texans
first=Bill
last=Harvey
pages=101
year=2003
publisher=University of Texas Press
isbn=0292734662]

Early life

His parents were Eldred James and Pattie Simkins. He entered the Citadel, a South Carolina military academy, in 1856.cite web
url=http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/SS/fsi12.html
title=The Handbook of Texas Online: SIMKINS, WILLIAM STEWART
publisher=Texas State Historical Association
date=2001-06-06]

Role in U.S Civil War

At daybreak on 9 January 1861, Simkins saw the signal from a guard boat, and sounded the alarm in the sand battery, alerting his fellow 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.cite book
title=The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War
first=James Lee
last=Conrad
pages=32
year=2004
publisher=University of South Carolina Press
isbn=157003575X] "The Daily Courier" initially credited him with the first shot, although the official account later gave the credit to a hometown boy named G. E. Haynesworth. [cite book
title=Remembering South Carolina's Old Pendleton District
first=Hurley E.
last=Badders
year=2006
publisher=The History Press
isbn=1596291974]

The cadets were graduated early on 9 April and pressed into service in defense of South Carolina. On the morning of 12 April 1861, Simkins, on duty near Charleston Harbor, participated in the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the first battle of the war.cite web
url=http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,846301,00.html
title=Monday, Mar. 11, 1929 (notices)
publisher=Time Magazine
date=1929-03-11] [cite book
title=History of South Carolina
first=Yates
last=Snowden
coauthors=Harry Gardner Cutler
pages=861
volume=II
publisher=The Lewis Publishing Company
year=1920
location=Chicago and New York] [His brief "Times" obituary puts him as firing the opening mortar here, an act usually ascribed to Edmund Ruffin, or Henry S. Farley; it seems likely sources have confused this with the January events.]

He was commissioned as a first lieutenant of artillery and served throughout the war. He commanded a battery during the First Battle of Charleston Harbor on 7 April 1863. [cite book
title=The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events
first=Frank
last=Moore
coauthors=Edward Everett
pages=513–4
volume=sixth
year=1863
publisher=G. P. Putnam
location=New York] He is mentioned on 19 September 1863 as the inspector general for General Hagood. [cite book
title=Siege Train: The Journal of a Confederate Artilleryman in the Defense of Charleston
editor=Warren Ripley
first=Edward
last=Manigault
publisher=University of South Carolina Press
year=1996
isbn=1570031274
pages=45] Simkins surrendered as a colonel in the army of Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina in 1865.

Post war activities

After the war he went to Monticello, Florida, where he and his brother, Eldred J. Simkins, organized the Florida Ku Klux Klan.

Simkins married Lizzie Ware on 10 February 1870. They had five children.

Simkins was admitted to the bar in 1870 and moved to Texas in 1873 where he practiced law at Corsicana. In 1885 he and his brother began a practice in Dallas. In 1894 he was, alongside Texas Attorney General Charles Allen Culberson, an appellant in two cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Reagan v. Mercantile Trust Co. and Reagan v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. [cite web
url=http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?friend=nytimes&court=us&vol=154&invol=413
title=REAGAN v. MERCANTILE TRUST CO, 154 U.S. 413 (1894)
publisher=U.S. Supreme Court
date=1894-05-26]

Professorship

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

Peregrinus, the mascot of the University of Texas School of Law, came from his course on Equity, after a drowsing student, Russell Savage, awoke halfway through Simkins's discussion of Roman law to the word "peregrinus" scrawled on the blackboard. Not understanding the context to Roman citizenship or a type of praetor, Savage made the first doodle of the four legged duck-billed creature.cite book
title=Peregrinusings: A Queer Title for Some Moronic Essays
first=Harry Yandell
last=Benedict
pages=ix
year=2005
publisher=Kessinger Publishing
isbn=1417997613]

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

His publications became standard textbooks in law schools in and beyond Texas. The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee conferred an honorary doctorate of civil law upon him in 1913.

He became professor emeritus in 1923, but continued to lecture once a week until his death. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Dallas.

The University's Simkins Hall dormitory is named after him.cite web
url=http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/2000-2001/memorials/AMR/Simkins/simkins.html
title=In Memoriam: William S. Simkins
first=John R.
last=Durbin
coauthors=Teresa Palomo Acosta
publisher=University of Texas Faculty Council
date=2001-01-18]

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)

References