Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1253

Rh began the manufacture of tobacco in partnership with his brother, G. W. Smith, which was continued until 1893. Since that date he has devoted his attention to fire insurance agency.

John M. Smith, a prominent business man of Salem, was born in Tazewell county in 1846, and there spent his infancy and youth until at the age of sixteen years, he became a soldier in the army of Northern Virginia. He enlisted in May, 1862, in the Sixteenth regiment of Virginia cavalry, distinguished in the record of the brigade of Gen. Albert G. Jenkins. With this command he participated in the defeat of Milroy at Winchester, in the second and third days' battles at Gettysburg, at Chancellorsville, Spottsylvania Court House, Yellow Tavern, Trevilian's, Brandy Station.and other affairs in which this active cavalry command found itself involved until in the spring of 1865, when operating in defense of the Confederate communications and sources of mineral supply in southwestern Virginia, a field where the gallant Jenkins himself lost his life, Private Smith received a gunshot wound through the body and right lung, while participating in the affair with Averell's cavalry at Wytheville, Va., May 10, 1864. Before this, in an engagement at Boonsboro, Md., he had been slightly wounded, without being compelled to leave the service, but this latter injury put an end to duty in the field, and rendered him an invalid for two years after he was sent home on account of disability on March 6, 1865. When the surrender occurred he was at home and was paroled at Princeton, Va. It was not until 1867 that his physical condition permitted him to find employment in a store at Abb's Valley, where he remained and in 1869 engaged in the management of a general store, which he conducted with much success until 1889. Since the latter date he has resided at Salem, and carried on a coal business. He served as commissioner of revenue of Tazewell county from 1872 to 1876, and in 1896 was elected to his third term as a member of the city council of Salem. In 1872 he was married to Margaret S., daughter of the late John W. Taylor, of Tazewell county, and they have four children: Thomas T., Mary R., Pearl L. and Charles B. Jonathan Smith, father of the foregoing, a native of Tazewell county, entered the military service in 1863, as a member of Preston's Home Guards, who served in protection of the salt wells in Washington county, and remained on duty until the close of the war. His honorable career, which included service for many years as magistrate in Tazewell county, was closed by death on June 28, 1895.

Orlando Fairfax Smith, of Washington, D. C, was born at Alexandria, Va., in 1842. His father, John W. Smith, a citizen of Maryland, served in the war of the Confederacy as a sergeant, and died at the age of seventy-eight years. His grandfather, John M. Smith, also a native of Maryland, was a soldier of the Maryland Line during the war of the Revolution, and held the rank of lieutenant. Mr. Smith was reared and educated at Alexandria, and in 1858 became a member of the Old Dominion Rifles, a volunteer military organization formed at that time, and with which he participated in the following year at Harper's Ferry in the capture of John Brown and the suppression of the attempted insurrection. The company was again under arms as soon as Virginia had seceded, and he served with the command in May, 1861, on guard duty at Four Mile Run. Soon afterward the company joined the