Spartan David Goodlett
Spartan David Goodlett was born on April 20, 1831, to Spartan Goodlett. His father was a farmer who owned $4,000 of real estate by 1850. He grew up and attended school in Greenville, South Carolina, and he read law in the office of Unionist lawyer Benjamin F. Perry. He earned admission to the bar in the 1850s and began practicing in Greenville. He also edited the Greenville Patriot & Mountaineer after Perry’s resignation in 1858.
Goodlett supported the Democratic Party, and he attended Greenville District’s party convention in February 1860. He was an active member in Greenville’s civic life, serving in the Greenville Agricultural Society and acting as a Commissioner of the Poor for Greenville District. He was also an officer in the state militia, and he was elected major general in the fall of 1860.
He married Mary Lyles on January 10, 1860, and they had at least two children: Flora, born around 1861; and Spartan, born around 1862. By 1860, Goodlett owned $4,500 of real estate and $9,000 of personal property, including at least six enslaved laborers.
He helped organize the 22nd South Carolina Infantry, and he received a commission as lieutenant colonel on January 15, 1862. The regiment was reorganized a few months later, and he became colonel on May 15, 1862. During the Battle of Kinston in December 1862, he refused to obey an order from General Nathan Evans, insisting the order was too outrageous to be accurate. He faced a court martial in April 1864, and Confederate officials cashiered him from service.
Goodlett settled in Pickens, South Carolina, after leaving the army, and he resumed his legal practice. He was elected as one of the town’s wardens in April 1869. By 1870, he owned $300 of real estate and $500 of personal property. He joined the Republican Party after the war, and he ran (unsuccessfully) for a seat in the state senate in 1870. He died in Pickens on May 16, 1874.
DATABASE CONTENT
| (2566) | Goodlett, Spartan David | 1831-04-20 | 1874-05-16 |
- Conflict Side: Confederacy
- Role: Soldier
- Rank in: Lieutenant Colonel
- Rank out: Colonel
- Rank highest: Colonel
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 1
- (7339) [writer] ~ Spartan D. Goodlett to Unknown, undated
Places - Records: 2
Regiments - Records: 1
- (771) [officer] ~ 22nd South Carolina Infantry
Groups - Records: 2
SOURCES
1850, 1860, and 1870 United States Federal Censuses, available from Ancestry.com; Military Service Record of Spartan D. Goodlett, available from Ancestry.com; Edgefield (SC) Advertiser, 31 October 1855; The Greenville (SC) Enterprise, 23 October 1856 and 9 February 1860; Camden (SC) Journal, 17 January 1860; The Intelligencer (Anderson, SC), 4 October 1860 and 15 April 1869; The Abbeville (SC) Press and Banner, 3 June 1874; Judith T. Bainbridge, Attorneys and Law in Greenville County: A History (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2015); Bruce S. Allardice, Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008).
