Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1136

1064 With this command he fought in 1861 and, upon the reorganization, the following year, joined Letcher's battery of Pegram's battalion of artillery and served the guns one year as a private, after which he was transferred to the Second Kentucky regiment, enabling him to follow the gallant trooper, John A. Morgan, under whose command he served until the close of the war, with the exception of his absence as a prisoner of war. He participated in the battle of Big Bethel in June, 1861, and in stampeding the Federal entrenchers and burning the village of Hampton in July, and subsequently fought at Mechanicsville, Malvern Hill, Cedar Mountain and Warrenton Springs, where he was badly wounded. Among the later actions in which he took part were Saltville and Tazewell Court House, with Morgan's command. At Cloyd's Mountain, Va., May 9, 1864, when the Confederate forces were attacked by superior numbers under Crook, and Gen. A. G. Jenkins was mortally wounded, Mr. Murphy was slightly wounded and fell into the hands of the enemy. He was then sent to Camp Chase, near Columbus, Ohio, and held there until the close of the war.. After being paroled he spent about one year in the Western States, and then returned to Virginia and made his home at Richmond, where he is now engaged in hotel management. He is an active member of R. E. Lee camp No. 1, Confederate Veterans, of which he was commander in 1886-87. He is prominent in the work of the Catholic church and of the organization of Catholic Knights of America, of which he served as president in 1886-87.

Henry H. Myers, a prominent merchant of Lexington, Va., was a student at Washington college at the beginning of the war of the Confederacy and began his gallant career as a soldier with the Liberty Hall Volunteers. He was born at Lewisburg, in what is now West Virginia, in 1843, and at the age of six years was brought with his family to Lexington, where he has since that time made his home. He left college in April, 1861, as a private in the Liberty Hall Volunteers, an organization of seventy-one high spirited students, which was incorporated in the Fourth regiment of infantry and assigned to the brigade soon afterward famous under the title of Stonewall, won at Manassas. With this brigade, at first under the command of Thomas J. Jackson and later attached to this division and corps, he fought in a skirmish near Winchester, then at the Manassas fight of 1861, through the Valley campaign of 1862, including the battles of Kernstown, McDowell, Cross Keys, Port Republic and Front Royal, and the defeat of Banks at Winchester, through the Seven Days' battles before Richmond, at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the defeat of Milroy at Winchester, and Gettysburg. In the fall of 1863 he was transferred to the First regiment of Virginia cavalry, with which he served during the remainder of the war, taking part in many actions, prominent among which were Kelly's Ford, Brandy Station, Yellow Tavern, Trevilian and the Wilderness. At Fredericksburg he was captured by the enemy and was held as a prisoner three weeks near Washington. During his cavalry service five horses were shot under him, an indication of the activity and perilous character of his duty. After the surrender his command was disbanded at Lynchburg and he returned to his home at Lexington. Soon afterward he embarked in the hardware trade at that city, and, continuing in this business ever since, has met with notable success.