Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1294

1214 companies under Major Montague, and two under Major Waddell. He served first with General Magruder on the peninsula, and in March, 1862, was attached with his regiment to General Armistead's brigade at Suffolk. He there served under Generals Randolph and Loring, making an expedition into North Carolina to repel an advance of the enemy. In May the regiment accompanied Armistead's brigade to Richmond, and participated in the battle of Seven Pines and the Seven Days' campaign, in the closing battle of which, Malvern Hill, Colonel Tomlin was slightly wounded. He subsequently took part in the battles of Second Manassas and the Maryland campaign, but his health then failed him, and after the battle of Sharpsburg he was compelled to retire from the service, Col. William R. Aylett succeeding to the command. The resignation of Colonel Tomlin was sincerely regretted by the officers and men of his regiment. At the time of his return to civil life he was a member of the Virginia legislature, his whole service in that body covering a period of seventeen years. A brother of Colonel Tomlin, Robert W. Tomlin, born in Virginia in 1814, was a man of notable scientific attainments who followed the profession of civil engineering, and was for a long time associated with the construction of the James River & Kanawha canal from Richmond to Lynchburg. In later years he engaged in farming and died in Hanover county in 1862. His wife was Hester Van Bibber Braxton, a daughter of Carter Braxton, of Middlesex county, and a lineal descendant of that Carter Braxton who was one of the signers of the declaration of independence. Robert W. Tomlin, son of the latter, was born in Hanover county December 18, 1860. At the age of fifteen years he entered Randolph-Macon college, where he was graduated at the age of twenty years with the degree of A. M. He then engaged in teaching for several years, first as principal of the Gatesville, N. C., school, and later in McGuire's university high school at Richmond. In the fall of 1885 he entered the law department of the university of Virginia, and after accomplishing the two years' work in one was graduated in June, 1886. During the following October he established himself at Norfolk, where he has met with notable success as an attorney, and has the promise of a distinguished career. On July 1, 1896, he received the appointment of police justice. He was formerly a member of the Fourth Virginia regiment of militia, and during five years discharged most acceptably the duties of captain and adjutant of the regiment, a rank to which he was promoted from that of sergeant.

Chatham Moore Towers, a native of Virginia, who was in the Confederate service during the entire war, and is now prominently connected with the city postoffice at the national capital, was born at Winchester in 1840. At the age of five years he accompanied his family to Washington, where he was reared and educated. At the outbreak of the war of the Confederacy the love of his native valley called him back to its defense, and nearly all his duty in the field was in the Valley campaigns. He entered the service just before the battle of Philippi, as a private in the Hardy Blues, a volunteer organization which was assigned to the Twenty-fifth Virginia regiment of infantry, in the command of Brig.-Gen. Robert S. Garnett, who was conducting a campaign from Beverly, W. Va. In this attempt to hold West Virginia