Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1039

Rh participated in an engagement with the forces landed from the U. S. steamers Pawnee and Freeborn, in which Captain Ward, of the Freeborn, commanding the Potomac flotilla, was killed. In the following August the Grays became Company B of the Fortieth Virginia regiment, Col. John M. Brockenbrough, and subsequently Sergeant Jones was advanced to the rank of third lieutenant. The first general engagement in which he participated was in the campaign before Richmond. In the battle of Gaines' Mill, in command of his company, all his superior officers having been either killed or wounded, he received a severe and dangerous gunshot wound in the head, which necessitated his removal to a hospital at Richmond. Subsequently he was taken to the home of his brother, Richard Lee Jones, at Bellevue, and later was under the care of his wife at Warsaw. He was not able to rejoin his command until shortly before Lee's army crossed into Maryland, and then participated in all the engagements of the Sharpsburg campaign in which Field's brigade took part, the brigade being then under the command of Colonel Brockenbrough. He also fought in the December battle at Fredericksburg and in the Chancellorsville engagement of May, 1863, after which he was made quartermaster of the Fortieth regiment and in that capacity accompanied his command to Gettysburg. In December, 1863, the brigade, now under the command of Gen. H. H. Walker, moved to the valley of Virginia to reinforce Early, and, while in winter quarters. Captain Jones wrote and caused to be read to his regiment a series of patriotic and inspiring addresses, which had the happy effect of causing the enthusiastic re-enlistment of the entire command for the full period of the war. In March, 1864, the regiment returned to Lee's main army, and in May was engaged in the bloody fights of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. Thence it moved to a point below Petersburg and suffered great losses in the engagements at Fort Archer and Fort MacRae. From the middle of December until the evacuation, the regiment served at Chaffin's Farm, under command of Gen. G. W. C. Lee, and it moved thence to Appomattox. Captain Jones did not share in the surrender, but made his way into North Carolina and joined Johnston's army, returning to his home only after all hope had died. Though the oldest man of his regiment, Captain Jones shared to the last the privations and perils of his comrades. He was inspired by a deep faith in the righteousness of his cause. Reverses did not discourage his dauntless spirit, and to the very end he confidently believed in the ultimate triumph of the Confederacy. These qualities, joined to his heroic bearing, conspicuous unselfishness and indomitable courage, were of great influence in the encouragement of his comrades, with whom he was ever popular. When he returned to his family at the close of the struggle, he found his fields wasted and his home in ashes, but he patiently began the cultivation of a crop, and, when civil government was restored and courts opened, he resumed the practice of law. With the exception of some eight or ten years, when he was judge of the counties of Richmond and Westmoreland, he continued in the practice, with that great industry and vigor which marked the whole course of his life, up to the time of his death, which occurred from typhoid fever, December 27, 1893.