Balfour, John W., 1828-1903

John W. Balfour was a Confederate officer from Mississippi during the Civil War.

Born in 1828 in Madison County, Mississippi, Balfour’s family were wealthy land owners and related by marriage to Jefferson Davis (U.S. senator, U.S. secretary of war, and then president of the Confederacy). Balfour was well educated and graduated from Oakland College.

During the Civil War he raised a state militia unit, nicknamed the “Beauregard Rifles” and was later appointed lieutenant colonel of the Sixth Mississippi Battalion. Balfour moved to different military units during the war, variously serving as a major in the Eighteen Mississippi Infantry Regiment and as a lieutenant colonel in the Thirty-first Mississippi Infantry Regiment. He was then commissioned as a colonel and authorized to raise the Forty-ninth Mississippi Infantry Regiment, but the unit was not formally organized. Balfour participated in several battles, most notably during the Vicksburg Campaign in 1863.

He died on April 19, 1903. He was married to Mary C. Humphreys.

(Jefferson Davis, The Papers of Jefferson Davis, ed. Lynda Lassell Crist, 641; National Park Service; Natchez Democrat, Natchez, MS, April 19, 1903)

John AW. Balfour belonged to the following social groups: