Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1332

1248 21, 1865. This closed his worthy record as an officer of the army of Northern Virginia. In 1868 he removed from Richmond to Staunton, where he has since resided, occupying an influential place in the community. He has rendered valuable service to the city during eight years as a councilman.

J. L. Welton, of Portsmouth, a gallant Virginian who came home from Appomattox in 1865, a veteran of Mahone's brigade at the age of twenty years, is of good old Virginia stock, his family having been residents of Greenesville county for many years. He was born there in 1845, the son of J. W. Welton and his wife, Rebecca B. Harrison. He was in school during the first year of the war, but in the spring of 1862, took a sudden and unannounced departure from home, and just after the battle of Seven Pines, enlisted in Company I of the Twelfth Virginia infantry regiment. Very soon afterward he received his introduction to war during the operations of his brigade, under General Mahone, in the Peninsular campaign, particularly in the bloody assault on Malvern Hill. Subsequently he took part in the battle of Second Manassas, was one of the heroes who held the Federal army at bay on Crampton's Gap of the South mountain, participated in the battle of Sharpsburg, and later at Brandy Station. In 1863 he fought at Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg on the second and third days, and was in the Bristoe and Mine Run campaigns. During 1864 he was at the front in the campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, and then stationed on the Petersburg lines, took part in much severe fighting, including the battle of the Crater. In the latter desperate fight he narrowly escaped death at the hands of three negro soldiers, who attacked him with clubbed muskets, but were all killed by Emmet Richardson of Company K. Finally in the engagement at Five Forks he joined in the retreat which followed and surrendered with Lee at Appomattox. After his return home this faithful soldier, who had gained the rank of sergeant of his company, and manifested his cool bravery on many bloody fields, attended school for six months, and then began his career in civil life. Entering the service of the Petersburg & Weldon railroad, he was soon given the position of locomotive engineer. Four years later he was, for a few months, in the service of the Norfolk & Western road, then under the presidency of his old commander, General Mahone. Since then he has acted as engineer eleven years with the Wilmington & Weldon and seventeen years with the Seaboard Air Line railroad, displaying in this responsible position the same courage and trustworthiness which characterized his military career. By his marriage in 1866 to Miss Catherine Victoria Bendall, he has two sons, Charles R. and Richard F., both well-known business men of Portsmouth, and two daughters, Mary V. and Fanny R.

Thomas I. West, adjutant of Peachy-Gilmer-Breckinridge camp, Confederate Veterans, Botetourt county, enlisted on April 6, 1861, in the Greenbrier Rifles, organized at Lewisburg, W. Va. This became Company E of the Twenty-seventh regiment, Stonewall brigade, with which Comrade West was identified throughout the four years' war. He served at Harper's Ferry under Jackson, participated in the expedition to Falling Waters, and there was taken with pneumonia which caused him to be left at