Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1244

1166 year to accept the office of collector of city taxes. To this position he was re-elected in 1888, and served through two terms, declining a third election. He was appointed to the office of collector of customs by President Cleveland in 1894, for a term of four years. He has rendered admirable service in this capacity, and many substantial and notable improvements have been made in the custom house during his incumbency and through his influence, which will commemorate his administration of the office. Mr. Shields was married December 29, 1885, to Mary Orra Love, daughter of the late Col. Robert Love, an eminent lawyer of Tennessee, and a first cousin of Col. Robert L. Taylor, governor of that State. Her ancestor, Alexander Love, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. They have three daughters, Frances Elizabeth Taylor, Virginia Taylor, and Dorothy Love Carter.

Colonel Scott Shipp, superintendent of the Virginia military institute, was born in Fauquier county, August 2, 1839. At the age of thirteen years he entered Westminster college, Missouri, and after three years' study served for a year on the engineer corps of the North Missouri railroad. In 1859 he was graduated with distinction at the Virginia military institute, and was at once appointed assistant professor of mathematics. In this department and that of Latin he continued until the outbreak of the war, when he resigned his position and was commissioned lieutenant and later captain in the provisional army of Virginia. He held the rank of assistant adjutant-general in the camp of instruction at Richmond, and as major of the Twenty-first Virginia regiment, in the Confederate provisional army, served with distinction under Lee in West Virginia, and Jackson in the valley. In 1862, by order of the secretary of war, he was detached from his regiment and returned to the institute as commandant of cadets, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, the position he occupied during the remainder of the war. At the battle of New Market, particularly, where he was wounded, he demonstrated the intrepidity and power of leadership of a successful officer. Upon the re-establishment of the institute after the war, he continued in the office of commandant, also studying law at Washington college and gaining admission to the bar, and from 1876 until 1890 filling the chair of Latin in addition to his other duties. In 1880 he was elected president of the Virginia agricultural and mechanical college, but declined this honor, preferring to remain with the school to which his life has been zealously devoted. He served as a member of the board of visitors of the United States military academy in 1890, was president of the board of visitors of the United States naval academy in 1894, and in 1891 received the honorary degree of LL. D. from Washington and Lee university. He was married in 1869 to a daughter of Arthur A. Morson, of Richmond, and they have three children.

The Virginia military institute, a school for soldiers, which has been pronounced second only to the national academy at West Point, gave to the Confederate cause twenty-one general officers—Major-Generals Mahone, Humes and Rodes, and Brigadier-Generals Echols, Lindsay Walker, Colston, Wharton, J. R. Jones, Garland Payne, Terry, A. C. Jones, Bass, Vaughn, Elliott, Munford, Jas. A Walker, Lane, Penn, McCausland and Terrill—more than