Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1158

1082 of John B. Strange, who afterward lost his life, as a colonel in the Confederate service at Sharpsburg. In 1855, on account of a yellow fever epidemic, Colonel Strange left Norfolk and established the Albemarle military institute, where young Old studied three years. In October, 1858, after a few months at the Broun & Tebbs school in Albemarle county, he entered the university of Virginia, where he was graduated as M. A., July 4, 1861. Already the war had begun and the university volunteers had been organized at the university, in which he held the rank of junior second lieutenant. On the day of graduation they were mustered into the Confederate service, and assigned to Wise's brigade, then operating in West Virginia, where the company was on duty until disbanded in the following December by order of the secretary of war. Captain Old, determined to remain in the service, acted a short time as volunteer aide upon the staff of General Wise, and then enlisted as a private in the Fourteenth Virginia regiment, commanded by Colonel Hodges. He was wounded in the second day's fight at Seven Pines, June 1st, and in August was commissioned captain and assistant quartermaster and assigned to Battery No. 9, of the Richmond defenses, under command of Col. James Howard. He served there until May, 1863, when he was ordered to Jackson's old division, then commanded by Maj.-Gen. Edward Johnson, and placed in charge of the commissary train during the Pennsylvania campaign. In December, 1863, he resigned that position to become aide-de-camp upon the staff of General Johnson. On May 12, 1864, during the fighting at Spottsylvania Court House, he was engaged in carrying a message to Gen. C. A. Evans, when General Johnson and many of his troops were captured. He was subsequently assigned to the staff of Lieut.-Gen. Richard S. Ewell, and on June 12, 1864, to the staff of Gen. Jubal A. Early, with whom he served through the Maryland campaign and the movement on Washington in that year. In August, his old commander, General Johnson, having been exchanged and ordered to the western army then under General Hood, and assigned to command the division of Patton Anderson, Captain Old rejoined his staff, and served in the west until October 31st, when he was severely wounded at Florence, Ala., incapacitating him during the remainder of the war. On being paroled after the capitulation of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, he returned home and went to teaching school and farming until civil affairs were well settled. In February, 1868, he was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of law at Norfolk, where he has since resided and has been successful in his profession as a member of the firm of Walke & Old. He is a member of the Protestant Episcopal church, is vestryman of Christ church, Norfolk, has for several years been delegate to the council of his diocese and chancellor of the diocese of southern Virginia, and was a delegate to the general convention at New York in 1889, Baltimore in 1892, and Minneapolis in 1895. In 1870 he was married to Alice, daughter of Edward H. Herbert, one of the most influential men of Princess Anne county.

A. W. Oliver, now a prosperous farmer of Nansemond county, shared throughout the war the noted service of Mahone's brigade. He was born in Nansemond county in 1843, the son of Sylvester Oliver, a farmer of that county, descendant of an old Virginian