Brigadier-General Ellison Capers, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 5, South Carolina
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

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[846] 1892. The mother of Mr. Sitton was the daughter of Jeptha Norton, a colonel in the war of 1812. She died in 1862. Augustus J. Sitton was the eldest of eight children, five sons and three daughters, six of whom, four sons and two daughters, are living. Two of the sons, Augustus J. and Frank L., served in the Confederate army. The latter was a private in Company E, Palmetto sharpshooters, during the last three years of the war, and was wounded slightly once. He now resides in Oconee county. Augustus J. was reared in Pendleton and educated in the Pendleton academy. During his youth, beginning as early as eleven years of age, when not at school, he was employed in the postoffice at Pendleton, of which his father was postmaster. His father also carried on a large carriage shop, in which Augustus learned that trade. In April, 1861, he volunteered and became a second sergeant in Capt. J. L. Shanklin's company, which became Company K, Fourth South Carolina regiment, commanded in the beginning of the war by Col. J. D. Ashmore and later by Col. J. B. E. Sloan. He served with it for twelve months, participating in the battle of First Manassas, where he was severely wounded in the right arm and rendered unfit for service for several months. As soon as he was able, he joined his command at Centreville, Va., and upon the reorganization in 1862 he again volunteered, this time for the war. He joined Company E, Palmetto sharpshooters, Capt. F. W. Kilpatrick, Col. M. Jenkins, and later Col. Joseph Walker. Being unable to carry a gun, on account of the wound received at First Manassas, he was detailed first as drillmaster and later as sergeant-major of the regiment. About May 1, 1862, he was appointed quartermaster-sergeant of his regiment and served in that capacity to the close of the war. The duty of paying the regiment fell to him every time and he was detailed repeatedly to pay off his entire division (Fields'), an evidence of the confidence reposed in him. Mr. Sitton was a member of Governor Hampton's staff in 1877-78, and was the originator of the red shirt as a campaign uniform, which was an important factor in ridding South Carolina of the carpet-bag and negro government in 1876. For a number of years after the war Mr. Sitton carried on a carriage-manufacturing business in Pendleton, and established in 1868 one of the first steam cotton gins in the