Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1300

1220 wounded three days before the surrender. After the war he became engaged in railroad construction, and later in the commission and livestock business at Richmond, where he died January 1, 1888. He left one daughter, Mary Huston Turk.

D. J. Turner, of Norfolk, is a native of Virginia, born at Portsmouth, January 13, 1844. His family was founded in Virginia in the seventeenth century by members of the Turner family of Scotland. His father, D. J. Turner, a merchant of Portsmouth, suffered imprisonment at Fortress Monroe during the late war, by orders of General Butler, because of his devotion to the Confederate cause. His mother was Sarah C. Webb, daughter of a Portsmouth merchant, and a member of the Webb family with which President Hayes was connected. Mr. Turner was completing his education at the Randolph-Macon college when the war of the Confederacy broke out. He entered the service as a member of the independent signal corps stationed at Norfolk and Sewell's Point, and was on duty there at the time and in full view of the famous encounter between the Virginia and the Monitor. Proceeding after the evacuation of Norfolk, to Richmond, he was detailed on scouting duty as a member of a force under Chief Joseph R. Woodly. After about eighteen months of adventurous and important service in this field, for which the chief and his men were thanked in a personal letter from Gen. R. E. Lee, he was detailed as signal officer on duty with blockade runners. In this capacity, serving between the Bermudas and Wilmington, N. C., he had many thrilling experiences and narrow escapes from capture. When Wilmington passed into Federal hands, he attempted to run the blockade at Charleston. After the fall of that city he sailed to Havana, and thence across the gulf, evading the Federal cruisers, and landed at Galveston. Proceeding eastward he was informed, on crossing the Mississippi, of the surrender of General Lee. He went on, hoping to join the army of General Johnston, but at Columbus, Ga., heard that he, too, had yielded to the inevitable. Despairing then of any further service, he gave his parole and returned to his home in Portsmouth to engage in the duties of civil life. For several years after his return he was engaged in transportation at Portsmouth and Norfolk. He has taken an active part in the public affairs of the city, has served repeatedly in the city councils of Portsmouth and Norfolk, for four years represented the Thirty-first senatorial district in the State legislature, and held the office of high constable of Norfolk. He is past grand commander of the Knights Templar; past grand chancellor and supreme representative of the grand lodge of Virginia of the Knights of Pythias; and brigadier-general commanding a brigade of the Virginia division of the Confederate Veterans. With one exception he is the oldest member of the supreme lodge of the Knights of Pythias. Mr. Turner was married in 1868 to Mary E., daughter of William B. Lawrence, of Portsmouth, and they have six children. One of their sons, Daniel Lawrence, is professor of civil engineering at Harvard university; another, Ernest W., is in business at Norfolk.

E. L. Turner, for many years clerk of the county and circuit courts of Greenesville county, was identified during the latter part of the war with the brilliant record of the cadets of the