Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1236

1158 ; and his two grandfathers, Joseph Seay and Henry George, were soldiers in the war of 1812.

Lieutenant Arthur S. Segar, now residing near Hampton, Va., and prominent in the legal profession of both Hampton and Newport News, was born in Accomack county, October 9, 1844, the son of John and Charlotte (Simkins) Segar. His father was a native of King William county and the descendant of a long line of Virginia ancestors. His mother's father was Arthur Simkins, who was born in Northampton county, the son of one of two brothers who emigrated from England and settled, one in Virginia and one in South Carolina. When Lieutenant Segar was but four years of age, he suffered the misfortune of the death of his father, and at the age of seven he was taken into the home of his uncle, Hon. Joseph Segar, of Elizabeth City county. He was given an excellent education at the Hampton academy, a military school, and the Danville military academy. The latter institution he left in the spring of 1861 to enlist in the service of Virginia. He became a private in a volunteer company at Hampton, called the Wythe Rifles, and remained with this command until September, 1861, the company being incorporated in the Thirty-second Virginia infantry, and serving on the peninsula under General Magruder. He was then transferred to the Sixth Virginia regiment, with which he served on Craney island until the evacuation of Norfolk and subsequently in the division of General Huger in the battles around Richmond, including the Seven Days' campaign. During the Manassas and Maryland campaigns he was on detached duty, after which in September, 1862, he was promoted first lieutenant of Company H, Thirty-eighth Virginia regiment of Pickett's division. Throughout the remainder of the war he shared the fortunes and misfortunes of Pickett's Virginians, fighting at Fredericksburg, Spottsylvania, Gettysburg and all their succeeding engagements. He participated in the immortal assault at Cemetery hill, on July 3, 1863, in which eighteen of the twenty-one men of his company were either killed or wounded. Though struck four times by spent balls, he had the good fortune to escape serious injury upon the field of Gettysburg, but with Beauregard, on May 16, 1864, in the battle at Drewry's Bluff, he was less lucky, receiving almost simultaneously two serious wounds, one in the left leg and the other in the right thigh. At the close of the war, after a gallant record in the army of Northern Virginia, he found employment for two years in Northampton county, teaching school, and subsequently continued in the same occupation for two years at Norfolk. In 1869-70 he served in the State legislature as one of the representatives of Norfolk, and made a creditable record in that public capacity. He removed to Hampton in the fall of 1870 and after teaching school there for three years, entered upon the practice of law in 1874. He has ever since devoted himself to the law, and has achieved a wide reputation for ability in his profession. For eight years he discharged with notable skill the duties of commonwealth's attorney for the county of Elizabeth City. Giving particular attention to corporation practice he has for sixteen years held the position of local attorney for the Chesapeake & Ohio railroad company, and is attorney for the Newport News Ship Building & Dry Dock company, the Old Dominion land company, and the