Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/786

730 became cashier of that bank, the position he has since occupied. He is a courteous popular official and a capable financier, holding the confidence alike of the public and of his financial associates. He is active in preserving the heroic memories of the army of Northern Virginia, and holds the rank of adjutant in A. P. Hill camp, United Confederate Veterans. In 1881 he was married to Miss Rirk, of Culpeper county.

Lieutenant Conrad R. Bitzer, of Herndon, Va., who served faithfully throughout the war of the Confederacy as a member of the Eighth Virginia regiment of infantry, was born in Loudoun county, April 27, 1838. He was reared and educated in that county, and there enlisted among the first to take up arms for Virginia, on the 17th of April, the day of the State's secession from the Union. His command became a part of the Eighth regiment, under command of Col. Eppa Hunton, and was known as Company A. In this company he was first enrolled as orderly-sergeant, and this position he held until February, 1862, when he was promoted second lieutenant. His meritorious conduct caused his further promotion in April, 1863, to first lieutenant, the rank which he held at the close of the war. He went into battle at Manassas in July, 1861, in Cocke's brigade of Beauregard's army, and in the following October was with his regiment prominently engaged in the defeat of General Stone's invasion at Ball's Bluff. In 1862, in Pickett's brigade of Longstreet's division, he took part in the battle of Seven Pines, and the ensuing Seven Days' fights, and subsequently participated in the second battle of Manassas and the famous struggle at Sharpsburg, Md. In the campaigns and battles of his regiment which followed, notably at Fredericksburg and the bloody fight in the Wilderness, he served faithfully. He then went to Clarke county, Va., to resume the occupations of civil life, and was engaged in teaching and farming until his return two years later to Loudoun county, where in 1874 he entered the railway service as station agent af Purcellville. In 1882 he was transferred to his present position at Herndon, Fairfax county, in the service of the Southern railway. He is a prominent member of the Masonic order and the Knights of Pythias, and represented the latter in the grand lodge of Virginia in 1896. On March 24, 1860, he was married to Miss Sarah Reed, of Clarke county, and they have one child, a daughter.

Benjamin Blackford, M. D., conspicuous for faithful and important service in the medical department of the army of Northern Virginia, and subsequently distinguished in the medical profession, especially as an alienist, was born in Luray, Va., in the year 1834. He is a son of Dr. Thomas T. Blackford, a well-known physician, of Lynchburg, Va., who was born at Pine Grove Furnace, Pa., in 1794. served in the Maryland Line at the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814, and died at Lynchburg in 1863. The family was founded in America by Benjamin Blackford, a Scotchman and an adherent of Prince Charles, who, after being captured at Culloden and imprisoned in Warwick castle, where his name is still legible, carved in the stone wall of his cell, was banished to America, and made his home in New Jersey in 1745. His son, Martin Anthony Blackford, born in Ayrshire in 1729, came to New Jersey ten years later. Benjamin Blackford, son of the latter and grandfather of Dr. Blackford, was born in New Jersey in 1767, entered the Continental army at the age of fourteen, was present at