William Emmett Simms

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Birth Date

1822-01-02

Death Date

1898-06-25

Gender

Race Description

White

Entity Type

Person

"William Emmett Simms" in the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, discovery.civilwargovernors.org/document/N00000822, (accessed November 4, 2025).

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Kentucky attorney, farmer, soldier, and politician. Graduate of Transylvania University law department. Admitted to the bar in 1846. Attorney in Paris, Kentucky. Married to Lucy Ann Frances Blythe Simms. Father of Lucy Blythe Simms, William E. Simms, Jr., and Edward Francis Simms. Served as a captain in the Mexican War. Elected as a member of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1849 and 1851. Democratic Party member of the Eighth Congressional District of Kentucky in the United States House of Representatives from 1859 to 1861. Served as a colonel in the Confederate Army. Served in the 1st Battalion, Kentucky Cavalry (C.S.A.) as a lieutenant colonel. Resigned on February 17, 1862, to serve as a Kentucky senator in the Congress of the Confederate States of America. Member of both the First and Second Confederate Congresses from 1862 to 1865.

Tenth Manuscript Census of the United States (1880), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Bourbon County, Paris, p. 37.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, s.v. “Simms, William Emmett,” (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=S000421) (accessed December 19, 2016).
“Simms, William Emmett,” The Kentucky Encyclopedia, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 822-823.
Find A Grave, “William Emmett Simms (1822-1898)," Memorial 68457590, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7397766, (accessed December 19, 2016).

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