Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1382

1292, Capt. E. L. Wharton and Col. Rob. M. Mayo, a gallant regiment that won martial honors on many a hard-fought field. He participated in nearly all the engagements of the regiment, prominent among which were the Seven Days' fighting before Richmond, including Frayser's Farm and Cold Harbor, Cedar Run and the second battle of Manassas, Belfield Station, Jones' House, where he was wounded in the left shoulder, Deep Bottom, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville and the Wilderness. At Mechanicsville, in the Peninsula campaign, he was slightly wounded, and at Gettysburg, where his regiment was in Heth's division of A. P. Hill's corps, he was again wounded. At Frayser's Farm in 1862 the Forty-seventh regiment, in Hill's division, had the honor of capturing the Federal general, George A. McCall, a distinction that has been erroneously ascribed by some writers to the Fifty-fifth regiment. During the desperate fighting in the Wilderness, Private Yeatman was severely wounded in the right knee, causing a permanent injury. Notwithstanding his crippled condition after this misfortune, his devotion to the cause was such that he was found in the ranks again at Sailor's Creek, the last important fight of the army of Northern Virginia. There he was captured and subsequently confined in Libby prison until eleven days after the surrender of General Lee. Then returning to his home in Westmoreland county, a veteran at the age of twenty years, he was confronted by the duties and responsibilities of civil life. He presently removed to Prince William county and engaged in farming, until after twenty years of this work the effects of his wound compelled him to seek another occupation. Since then he has been engaged in business at Alexandria. He is a member of R. E. Lee camp at that city.

Captain John J. Young, a native of Sydney Cape Breton, Prince Edward's island, Canada, who removed to Norfolk before the war of the Confederacy, in the latter part of April, 1861, organized a heavy artillery company, of which he was elected captain. He uniformed the company at his own expense, and contributed, out of his private funds, toward the erection of an earthwork at Boush's bluff, where the company was assigned to duty. With a thirty-two pounder ship gun, Captain Young fired the first shot at the enemy in that vicinity, and in May, 1861, had an encounter with the United States steamship Monticello. In July his company, being composed of seafaring men, was transferred to duty as harbor guards, patrolling the lower harbor at night with four armed launches, and a number of small boats. Upon the evacuation of Richmond he took his boats and guns up the Nansemond to Suffolk, and thence carried his howitzers by rail to Richmond. The company served under his command at Chaffin's bluff, in the Thirteenth Virginia battalion, until the summer of 1863, when it met the army at Harper's Ferry on the return from Gettysburg, and returned to Richmond in charge of prisoners. The company was then known as Young's Howitzers. Captain Young's health failed in 1863, and he was granted a sick leave. The company continued in service on the Richmond and Petersburg lines, and was in the battle of Sailor's Creek, with Custis Lee's division. William A. Young, son of the foregoing, born at Norfolk, May 17, 1860, received his literary education at St. Mary's academy, of his native city, and then entered upon the study of law. This, however, he