Marriage and Family
Bates married Miss Julia Coalter from South Carolina. They had 17 children together. Her brother David Coalter lived in St. Louis, and her sister Caroline J. Coalter married Hamilton R. Gamble, another attorney of the city, who became the chief justice of the State Supreme Court.
Bates was, for the most part, happy with his large family. During the Civil War, his son Fleming Bates served with the Confederates, under the command of General Sterling Price. This was a cause of tension between the father and the son, and Bates rarely mentioned Fleming in his war-time diary. Another son, John C. Bates, served in the US Army and later became Army Chief of Staff. The youngest son, Charles, was still at West Point during the war.
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Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or family:
“A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there’s no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it’s an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“A family with an old person has a living treasure of gold.”
—Chinese proverb.