Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/866

808 was reared in Augusta county and educated at the university of Virginia. In 1853, having prepared himself for the practice of law, he made his home at Staunton and was admitted to the bar. He continued in the practice of his profession until April 17, 1861, when he abandoned this occupation to enter the military service of Virginia. Repairing to Harper's Ferry, where the military strength of the valley had gathered under the leadership of Col. Thomas J. Jackson, he served under that commander and later under Gen. J. E. Johnston as ordnance officer, though uncommissioned, until the battle of First Manassas, when he was offered the position of quartermaster, with the rank of captain, by Col. John B. Baldwin, commanding the Fifty-second regiment, Virginia infantry. In this capacity Captain Cochran continued to serve, rendering important service to his regiment, until he was surrounded and paroled at Appomattox. He participated in the campaigns and battles of his regiment, was in the battles of Alleghany Mountain, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and the Wilderness, and after serving in the Shenandoah valley on detached service from July until October, 1864, was with his regiment on the Petersburg lines and at Appomattox. After being paroled, he again made his home at Staunton and resumed the practice of law, which he has since continued. He was elected to the legislature in 1889 and served one term, and has, during several terms, been a member of the city council.

Captain John Archer Coke, who since the war has been prominently associated with the legal profession at Richmond, was born at Williamsburg, July 14, 1842. In the years of peace preceding the great struggle he was educated at William and Mary college and received the degree of A. B. in 1860. It was his intention then to embrace the profession of law, but in anticipation of the outbreak of the war, he enlisted in March, 1861, in the Lee Artillery, an organization formed at Williamsburg, under Capt. W. R. Garrett, of which he was elected second lieutenant. The command subsequently entered the service of the Confederate States and gallantly participated in the battle of Williamsburg, where they captured four guns from the enemy, which were then presented to the battery by General Longstreet. At the reorganization of the army, in the spring of 1862, Lieutenant Coke was promoted captain, in which rank he served until after the Maryland campaign of that year, when, on account of losses of men and equipment, the artillery was reorganized and his company was consolidated with the Second and Third Richmond Howitzers. Captain Coke was then ordered to report to Gen. G. W. Smith, at Richmond, and was subsequently assigned to duty as enrolling officer for the Third congressional district of Virginia, with headquarters at Richmond, under command of Col. John C. Shields, commander of the conscript department for that State. He continued in the same service after Gen. J. L. Kemper was put in charge of the department, and while on this duty, volunteered in every expedition organized to meet the raids of the Federals about the city. In one of these, while acting as aide-de-camp for the colonel commanding Gen. Eppa Hunton's brigade, and carrying an order to the colonel of a regiment on the left of the line, he was wounded on the head by a piece of shell, but not seriously hurt. When Richmond was