Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1254

1176 other forces at Manassas, and was organized in the Seventeenth Virginia infantry as Company H. As a private in this company he served throughout the war. He was engaged in battle at Bull Run on July 18, 1861, at Manassas three days later, at Yorktown, Williamsburg and the Seven Days' fighting of the Peninsular campaign, at the close of which, while engaged in a charge upon a Federal battery, he fell and was run over by a gun. The result of this accident was the breaking of his arm, and his capture by the Federals. As a prisoner of war he was sent to Fort Delaware, where he was held for four months. When captured he had the flag of his company, which he managed to secrete about his body, and preserved it during his imprisonment, so that he had the satisfaction, when exchanged and out of the hands of the Federals, but in their sight, to unwrap his flag, fasten it to a hoop-pole and flaunt it in their faces. Rejoining his command, Private Smith served in the trenches at Petersburg eight months, fought at Brandy Station, where he was shot in the right thigh and received a saber cut in the wrist, and at Five Forks, where he was captured, but escaped during the following night, at Sailor's Creek and at Appomattox, where he surrendered with the army and was paroled.

Robert R. Smith, now a prominent citizen and official of Nansemond county, was identified in his military career with the Thirteenth Virginia regiment cavalry corps, army of Northern Virginia. He was born in Nansemond county in 1845, the son of Maj. Robert R. Smith, a wealthy farmer and merchant who represented Nansemond county in the Virginia assembly. His grandfather, Washington Smith, was also a prominent citizen of this county. Mr. Smith was attending school in Dinwiddie county when Virginia united her fortunes with the Confederacy, and he subsequently was in school in Amelia county until the capture of Roanoke island, when he returned home and enlisted as a private in the Nansemond cavalry, under Captain Brewer. With this command he served in the early part of 1862 in the operations in North Carolina, acting as a vidette between the Chowan river and Suffolk, and in the operations on the Blackwater, under General Huger, until he was honorably discharged on account of physical disability. In December, 1863, having recovered his health, he rejoined his company, now Company I of the Thirteenth Virginia cavalry, commanded by Colonel Chambliss, and attached to the brigade of W. H. F. Lee (afterward Chambliss' brigade), in Fitzhugh Lee's division of Stuart's cavalry, and stationed at Charlottesville. During 1864 he took part in all the fighting of his command, beginning at the Wilderness and Deep Bottom, where General Chambliss fell, and the various operations about Richmond and Petersburg. At the time of the surrender of the army he was detailed to obtain horses for his company, and was at Forge's depot in the midst of the Federal forces. He reached home about the 20th of April, 1865, and soon afterward, under the terms of President Johnson's amnesty proclamation, found it necessary as a Confederate having an estate of more than $20,000, to spend six or seven hundred dollars to regain his citizenship. Since then he has been engaged in farming, also for a few years being connected with the mercantile trade, and for a time managing the hotel at Suffolk. He served eight years as sergeant for