Colonel Alexis Theodore Rainey (CSA)

Alexis Theodore Rainey, lawyer, Texas state legislator, and Confederate officer, was born in 1822 in Alabama. On January 1, 1850, in Union County, Arkansas, he married Ann E. Quarles of Alabama; they had seven children. The 1860 census listed Rainey and his family living in Palestine, Texas, where he worked as a lawyer. In 1859 Rainey was elected to a seat in the Texas senate as a Democrat and represented the Twelfth Texas District through the regular session. He resigned in February 1860. Anderson County selected him to be one of three delegates to the Secession Convention held in Austin where he voted to secede from the United States.

After the outbreak of the Civil War, Rainey organized the Anderson County Invincibles at Palestine on May 11, 1861. They were soon absorbed into the First Texas Infantry, Company H, and Rainey was made major. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on November 12, 1861, and then made colonel on January 2, 1862. In the battle at Gaines' Mill, June 27, 1862, he was wounded and went home to Texas. Although he was unable to return to active military engagements, he was assigned to staff duty in Houston by Gen. John Bankhead Magruder. He was dropped from the rolls of the First Texas Infantry early in 1864 when he was succeeded by Frederick S. Bass.

Alexis Rainey resumed his law practice and farmed in Anderson County after the war. He remained active in public life; he was a presidential elector for Horace Greeley in the 1872 election. Rainey died in Elkhart, Texas, on May 17, 1891.