This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/lMB.2ACI/664.1.1.1 Message Board Post: James G. Pitts parents were Josiah Pitts and Lucy Craig of Georgetown, KY. Josiah died in 1815. I have the following information regarding James G. (Garsed) Pitts Casualty - The New Orleans Jeffersonian Republican has the following: Extract of a letter from Col. J.J. MCaughan, dated , "Mississippi City, May 12, 1845(6?). "On the 3rd inst. Mr. Williams, of Canton Miss., Mr. James G. Pitts, of Kentucky, and a negro man of Dr. Te Garden, left this place in a small boat for Cat Island; and when returning that evening were struck by a squall, which sunk the boat about four miles from land, in fourteen feet water, and they all perished. On the 8th inst. we found the body of Mr. Williams, and buried it on Ship Island; the others we have not yet found, though great exertions have been made. Mr. Williams was a mechanic of good standing, and has left a wife and child." Mr. Pitts was a native of Kentucky, at one time an attorney, then an editor and publisher of the Hopkinsville Gazette. He ran the first line of stages between Louisville and Nasvhille, and afterwards built several steamboats. He was the first to nagigate the Green and Barren rivers by steam as far as Bowling Green. He was once in the Senate of Kentucky, and when a lad, was attached to Gernal (or Doctors) Long's expedition to Texas, was wrecked near Barataria, but managed to reach Galveston with only one man out one hundred who started with him. He there came near being massacred by pirates, and afterwards had a narrow risk of being sent home on a false suspicion of piracy by the United States revenue cutter. But upon examination he was entrusted with the command of a pirutical(?) prize, and made his way to New Orleans, where in 1841 he published a city directory. Thus has terminated his adventruous life, and I am now in search of his body to give it burial. He has left a wife and one child and one brother, Rev. Fountain E. Pitts of Nashville.