Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1180

1104 of the Confederate government, Mr. Pegram turned to the duties of civil life and locating at Portsmouth, entered the service of the Seaboard & Roanoke railroad company. In 1868 he left this employment to become the agent at Portsmouth of the St. Louis Mutual life insurance company, until 1871, when the Life insurance company of Virginia having been formed, with its office at Petersburg, Va., he became its assistant secretary. A few years later he was promoted secretary of the company and in 1880 the office of the company was removed to Richmond, where he now resides. He has effectively co-operated in the management of this organization, whose success is an eloquent illustration of the benefits of home insurance in the South. Mr. Pegram maintains a lively interest in the fortunes of his old comrades, and is a member of R. E. Lee camp, Confederate Veterans, and one of the board of visitors of Lee Camp Soldiers' Home.

Captain Richard Gregory Pegram, a captain of artillery in the army of Northern Virginia, and since then prominent as an attorney at Richmond, Va., was born at Petersburg, February 14, 1829. His grandfather, John Pegram, a native of Dinwiddie county, who died in 1832, held the office of United States marshal for Virginia during the time of the famous trial of Aaron Burr, on the charge of treason, at Richmond, in 1807. His father, Richard G. Pegram, died in 1829 at the age of twenty-nine years, so that Captain Pegram was reared without a father's care. His education was taken in hand by his uncle, Robert Birckett, a graduate of Cambridge, and famous in that day as a teacher. Being trained for the legal profession he was admitted to the bar in 1850, and at once embarked in the practice at Petersburg. In August, 1861, he entered the service of the Confederate States as a private in Company E of the Twelfth Virginia infantry, and remained in that command until May, 1862, when he was promoted first lieutenant of Branch's artillery. After gallant service in that rank until 1863 he was promoted captain of the battery, a command which he held with ability and faithfulness in duty until he dismounted his six guns at Appomattox. Notable among the engagements in which he took part were those at Harper's Ferry, the first Fredericksburg, Bottom's Bridge, Va., the defense of the Petersburg lines, and the final action at Sailor's Creek. His battery was stationed at that point of the Confederate lines before Petersburg which were mined by the enemy, and at the explosion of "the Crater" his battery was blown up, killing two officers and seventeen men. After the close of the war Captain Pegram resumed the practice of his profession, first at Petersburg, and since 1881 at Richmond. Before the war he held the office of commonwealth's attorney at Petersburg, and on his return was re-elected, but was subsequently removed from office for political reasons.

Colonel William J. Pegram began his career in the Confederate army as lieutenant of artillery. His first affair with the enemy was near Marlboro point, at the mouth of Potomac creek, where the Confederate batteries were engaged with two Union gunboats. Col. William Cary of the Thirtieth Virginia commanded in this affair and he reports as follows: "The officers in charge of the pieces and the men behaved with proper calmness and deliberation. They were Lieutenants Hagerty, Pegram and Dabney." In the