Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1196

1118 Mills C. Daughtrey, a prominent business man of Suffolk, who died in 1857. He was educated at the university school in Albemarle county, and at the age of seventeen years began an apprenticeship as a machinist at Richmond. Two years later, when the young men of Virginia were being called into the military service he offered to enlist, but the great demand for skilled labor in the production of military and naval supplies and munitions made it imperative that he should render his service in the shop, rather than on the battlefield. Nevertheless, he was a member of the reserve forces at Richmond, for local defense, and participated in several of the engagements about Richmond in which the various Federal raids were foiled of their object. After the war he was engaged for a considerable period as a locomotive engineer on railroads in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, until he was severely injured in a wreck. Since 1889 he has been engaged in the publication of band music at Suffolk, doing an extensive business. John Beauregard Pinner, a half-brother of those above mentioned, who has taken an active part in the development of southeastern Virginia since the war, was born at Suffolk in 1861, son of John Franklin Pinner, a business man who had the largest real estate holdings in Suffolk at the time of his death in 1897. He was educated at the Bethel military academy, Randolph-Macon college, and the university of Virginia, and then embarked in the practice of law at Suffolk, much of his time also being given to the management of his extensive real estate interests. He has served as mayor of Suffolk two years, also as councilman, and as commissioner of accounts for Nansemond county.

Adam H. Plecker, of Lynchburg, a gallant veteran of the Botetourt artillery, is a native of the Shenandoah valley, born in Rockingham county in 1840. He was reared in that and Augusta counties, and had embarked in the business of photography when he abandoned all other occupations for the defense of the State. At the time of the excitement caused by the efforts of John Brown and his allies, the Mountain Rifles, an independent militia company, was organized in 1859, at Buckhannon, Va., and in this command he enlisted early in 1861. It was mustered into the service of the Confederate States May 14, 1861, with one hundred and fifteen men, becoming part of the Twenty-eighth Virginia infantry. With this regiment he served, as a private, eight months, after which period the Rifles, on re-enlistment, was converted into an artillery company, with six guns, known as Anderson's battery. In this command Private Plecker was elected as gunner and served as such during the war, refusing promotion. Just before the siege of Vicksburg the name of the battery was changed to the Botetourt battery, as which it was known until after having achieved a splendid record, it spiked its guns and disbanded at Christiansburg, southwest Virginia, on the Tuesday following the fateful day at Appomattox. Mr. Plecker served with the Twenty-eighth regiment at the first battle of Manassas and in June, 1862, was with his battery at Cumberland Gap, where the Federals were forced to retreat into Kentucky. Then being assigned to service in the defense of the Mississippi river, he was engaged at Bayou Pierre; at Port Gibson, where a small force of Confederates made a gallant stand against Grant's army at the beginning of his attack upon