Maj Walter H. Overton AUS was CO of Ft St. Phillips commanding over 135 men during the Dec 1814- Jan 1815 battles below New Orleans.

For his service below New Orleans - Major Overton was brevetted a lieutenant colonel on December 23, 1814, for actions at the Battle of New Orleans and transferred to the Artillery Corps in May 1815 before resigning his commission on October 31, 1815.

Overton settled near Alexandria, Louisiana in Rapides Parish and served as a member of courthouse building commission in 1820 and 1821, a member of the Commission on Navigation of Bayou Rapides in 1824.

Overton was elected as a Jacksonian Democrat — his father had served as Andrew Jackson's second in his duel with Charles Dickinson — to the Twenty-first Congress (March 4, 1829 – March 3, 1831).

He succeeded three-term Whig William Leigh Brent, whose son James Fenwick Brent (1814-1847) married his daughter Laura Harriet Overton (1822-1844).