Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1305

Rh with the history of the State. His grandfather, a native of the Old Commonwealth, served as a captain in the Revolutionary war, and his maternal grandfather, Richard Wilson, took part in the same patriotic struggle with the rank of captain.

Captain George C. Vanderslice, a Confederate soldier who was afterward conspicuous in the ministry of the Methodist church in Virginia, was born at Richmond July 30, 1836. He was educated at the Washington and Lee university and the Virginia military institute, and then prepared himself for the ministry, becoming a member of the Virginia conference of the Methodist church in 1859. After he had performed pastoral duties for two years on the Amherst circuit, he determined to offer his services as a soldier, being specially qualified by his studies at the military institute, in the great emergency of 1861. In the spring of 1861 he became captain of Company D, Forty-ninth Virginia infantry, and served in this rank during the Peninsular campaign, taking part in the defense of Yorktown, and the great battles before Richmond, including Seven Pines and Malvern Hill. Upon the reorganization of the army in 1862, he resigned his captaincy and applied for a position as chaplain, but there being a great pressure for appointments to that service, he resumed his work as a minister. He continued in this calling with marked success and, while pastor of the Union station, at Richmond, Va., died March 17, 1898. His wife, Susan A. Pettit, born in Amherst county July 4, 1840, the daughter of Samuel Pettit, a farmer, had four brothers in the Confederate service: Alfred G., William, who was killed at Sharpsburg; Edward and James C, who was twice captured and at the close of the war was a prisoner at Point Lookout. Mrs. Vanderslice remained at her home in Amherst county during the war, and was a witness of the active military operations in that vicinity, and was frequently in peril, being compelled on one occasion to gather up two of her younger children and flee to a place of safety, it becoming a necessity for the Confederate batteries to shell an important Federal position near her home. Dr. George Keesee Vanderslice, one of the sons of Dr. Vanderslice and wife, was born in Henrico county, on the Malvern Hill battlefield, November 12, 1870. He received his literary education at McCabe's university school at Petersburg, and his medical training in the university of Virginia, graduating in 1892. After spending one year at St. Vincent's hospital, Norfolk, as resident physician, he began practice at Phoebus, Va., his present home. He is prominent among the younger physicians of southeastern Virginia, was elected a fellow of the State medical society in 1893; is a member of the clinical society of the staff of Dixie hospital; and of the local branch of the State board of health; and is examining surgeon for several life insurance companies.

Townsend Heaton Vandevanter, of Leesburg, a gallant soldier of White's battalion, was born in Loudoun county May 1, 1844. After receiving his preparatory education in his native county he entered the Virginia military institute, where he was a student when the State was invaded by the Federal troops, and the war of the Confederacy was begun. When he was a little over eighteen years of age he enlisted in the fall of 1862 in Company A of the Thirty-fifth Virginia battalion of cavalry, under command of Col. E. V. White. He served as a private in this command until