Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/782

726 at that city April 3, 1834, of a family conspicuous for its loyalty and patriotic devotion. After receiving an academic education in the Portsmouth schools, he studied medicine at the Homeopathic college of Philadelphia, and was graduated in 1855. He then, until the beginning of the war, practiced his profession at his native city, also taking an active part in the organization and maintenance of the Old Dominion Guard, Third regiment Virginia volunteers, in which he held the rank of second lieutenant. In this rank he entered the active service on April 20, 1861, and served at Pinner's Point during the Confederate occupation of that region. The company being assigned to the Ninth Virginia regiment as Company K, he participated in the Peninsular campaign and was wounded in the battle of Seven Pines, June 1, 1862. After his recovery he participated in the battles of Warrenton Springs and Second Manassas, in the latter engagement receiving a severe wound that disabled him from further active duty in the field. He subsequently acted as surgeon of his regiment until 1863, when he retired from the service, and returned to Portsmouth. Since then he has been prominent in the medical practice of his city and an influential citizen. He has served four years upon the city council, two years as health officer, and ever since the war period has held the position of surgeon for the Seaboard Air Line railroad. In 1856 Dr. Bilisoly was married to Miss Rosa Mills, of Alexandria, Va. Their oldest son, Alonzo A. Bilisoly, received the degree of doctor of medicine from the university of Maryland in 1894, and since then has been associated with his father in professional work. He is a member of the State medical society and surgeon of the Fourth Virginia regiment.

William J. Binford, of Henrico county, the only survivor of three young brothers who served in the cause of Virginia and the Confederacy, was born at the city of Richmond, July 29, 1846, and was reared from infancy upon his father's farm in Hanover county, the scene of the first fighting of the Seven Days' battles of 1862. He is the son of William A. Binford, a native of Goochland county, where his ancestors, members of one of the oldest and most worthy families of Virginia, had resided for several generations. His grandfather, Thomas Binford, was a soldier of the Revolution, and represented his county in the Virginia legislature, an honor also bestowed upon his immediate ancestors as well as William A. and William J. Binford. The mother of William J. Binford was Lucy, daughter of Johnson Eubank, a contractor and one of the wealthiest citizens of Richmond in his lifetime. She was a woman of remarkable talent for public affairs, as well as possessed of the tender womanly virtues, and was widely known as the president of the Ladies' association of the Virginia agricultural society, and regent of the Mount Vernon association. Mr. Binford passed his youth upon the farm of his father in Hanover county, a plantation of five hundred acres, worked by one hundred and fifty slaves, and was reared amid the comforts and social influences of the old regime. On January 1, 1862, in his sixteenth year, he enlisted as a private in a company of the Hanover troop of cavalry. Company G of the Fourth Virginia cavalry regiment, then commanded by General Robertson, later by General Wickham, and throughout the war under the leadership of Fitzhugh Lee. He shared the campaigns and battles of this regiment throughout the war,