Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/874

814 Rosser. Throughout the war he was identified with the record of this regiment and rendered faithful and efficient service. He was twice promoted and held the rank of orderly sergeant at the end of the struggle. After the close of hostilities he resumed his life as a farmer and continued in that occupation until his death, February 22, 1888. His wife was Harriet Virginia, daughter of William L. Spencer, a Confederate soldier, who, after the war, served twenty-five years as sheriff of James City county. She now resides in Hampton, Va. Dudley Redwood Cowles, the fourth of their nine children, was born March 26, 1872, and was reared upon the farm in James City county, graduating at William and Mary college in 1894. During his collegiate course he was out of college four years and was occupied as principal, in succession, of a school in his native county, the Bridgetown graded school and the Chesapeake academy, on the eastern shore of Virginia. After his graduation he made his home at Hampton, and engaged in business, but soon became principal of the Hampton academy. He is an excellent teacher, and has before him a career worthy of his parentage. He has served for one year as secretary of the Virginia State Agassiz association, and in 1898 was elected president of the Virginia teachers' co-operative league. He also holds an appointment from the State board of education as instructor in the Virginia summer Normal schools. He is a member of the Hampton camp of Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Lieutenant Elijah L. Cox, of Norfolk, now a prosperous business man, rendered effective service during the Confederate war in Southeastern Virginia and North Carolina. He was born in Currituck county, N. C., in 1842, the son of William C. Cox, a prominent planter, who served as a volunteer soldier in the Mexican war, and a great-nephew of Maj. John Cox, a soldier of the war of 1812. The family were residents of that county in the colonial period, and Major Cox treasured with much care a cannon that was captured on his father's farm during the war of the Revolution. Lieutenant Cox passed part of his youth with his parents in Illinois, but returning to his native State a few years before the formation of the Confederacy, he enlisted in the spring of 1861 as a private in Company A, of the Seventeenth North Carolina infantry. During that year he was stationed at Oregon inlet, north of Cape Hatteras, until the capture of the fort at the latter point, when his command was called to Roanoke island, and served under the command of Gen. Henry A. Wise until the island fell into the hands of General Burnside in February, 1862. He escaped the capture which befell a large part of the garrison, on account of being detailed to serve on a floating battery in Croatan sound, and after the naval battle off Roanoke island, he made his escape with comrades in small boats to Fort Landing on Alligator river, whence he took steamer to Hertford, and joining the troops at Elizabeth City, joined in the retreat to South Mills. During the remainder of his year's enlistment he served on picket duty in that vicinity. He then entered a military school and attended during the remainder of the year. Subsequently he organized and drilled a company of which he was elected second lieutenant, and with it carried on a partisan service in North Carolina, and served on picket duty on the Chowan river. He made one very successful expedition down the river, capturing more