Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/792

736 meanwhile, on January 12, 1871, becoming united in marriage with Laura Winder Garrett, daughter of Hon. Richard E. Garrett, and grand-niece of Gen. John H. Winder. Five of their children are living. From 1885 to 1889 he served as postmaster at Fort Monroe and while in this office frequently had his attention called to the demand for a second hotel at Old Point Comfort. In 1889 he began the construction of the Sherwood hotel, which bears the name of the Booker homestead, and it has become a popular resort under his management. In 1894 he was appointed to a second term as postmaster. He is a member of R. E. Lee camp No. 3, Confederate Veterans, and is popular with his comrades as well as with a wide circle of acquaintances.

Marshall A. Booker, the fourth son of Maj. George Booker, was born at Sherwood, November 15, 1851. As a boy he observed the stormy scenes of 1861 to 1865, but was too young to go to the field of battle. Driven from home by the military operations which at an early date were carried on upon the peninsula, he was a refugee with his mother and her family at Williamsburg, Petersburg and Clarksville, until the cessation of hostilities. Returning to the devastated home after the close of war, he found it necessary to find employment at Hampton soon afterward as a clerk in a commission store. From 1869 to 1871 he attended the school of W. Gordon McCabe at Petersburg, and after this he devoted himself to the care of the Sherwood farm until 1875, when he received the appointment of superintendent of the farm connected with the hospital for the insane at Williamsburg. In February, 1877, he embarked in business at Hampton, and since that date has given his whole attention to mercantile and manufacturing pursuits, with gratifying success. For several years he conducted a hardware establishment at Hampton, with his brother, H. R. Booker, as a partner. He then traveled five years as salesman for a wholesale hardware house of Baltimore and subsequently conducted a wholesale house in the same line of trade at Staunton. In 1889 he took part in the organization of the Basic City car works, of which he became secretary and treasurer in 1890. Since 1892 he has resided at Hampton, where, in 1894, he established a wholesale grocery and commission house, which speedily became one of the prominent business concerns of the city. On November 25, 1885. he married Miss Mary Elliott Bechtel, of Baltimore, and they have three children: Mary Ethel, lima, and John Marshall.

Harry Wise Booker, one of the younger sons of the family of Maj. George Booker, a family noted for patriotic endeavor in time of war and for honorable success in their civil pursuits, was born on the Sherwood farm, March 5, 1854. In childhood he experienced the misery and deprivation attending war, as a refugee from his home, and on his return to his birthplace after the close of hostilities he realized the devastation and enormous loss which were suffered by the South. In childhood his mother was necessarily his tutor, and he could have had no better. He completed his education at William and Mary college, and then, after teaching school for a time spent two years in Texas. Returning to Hampton in 1876, he engaged in the mercantile trade under the firm name of H. W. Booker & Co., from 1878 to 1894. In the latter year he accepted the position of deputy clerk of Elizabeth City county, under his brother, John Booker, the third son of Maj. George Booker.