Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/929

Rh was removed. After peace was restored he studied law in the university of Virginia and embarked in the practice of his profession at Boydton. The duties of the presidency of the Bank of Mecklenburg, to which he was elected in 1872, and the care of his estate on the Roanoke river, now engage his attention. In 1887 he was married to Alice Marrow, of Mecklenburg county.

Captain Alexander N. Finks, of Criglersville, Madison county, Va., commander of Kemper-Strother-Fry camp. Confederate veterans, was born in that county, August 23, 1835. In the spring of 1861 he left the mercantile business, in which he was then engaged, to take up arms for the defense of Virginia, and was first assigned to duty at Culpeper as provost marshal. Eight months later he became first lieutenant of Company L, Tenth Virginia infantry, and, upon the reorganization of the army, he was promoted captain of the company. He was identified with the gallant record of his company in every campaign and battle from First Manassas to Spottsylvania Court House. In the latter battle, during the disastrous attack upon Johnson's division, May 12, 1864, he was captured and for nearly fourteen months afterward was a prisoner of war. He was first confined at Fort Delaware and thence, in August, 1864, was transported to Morris island, S. C., where, after being held on the prison ship Crescent for six weeks, he was landed on Morris island and placed in the stockade between Batteries Wagner and Gregg and guarded by negroes of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. He was one of the six hundred Confederate officers sent to the department of South Carolina for retaliation and, for forty-one days held in camp under fire of the opposing batteries, with ten ounces of meal per day for rations. In October he was carried to Fort Pulaski, Ga., and thence to Hilton Head, where he spent the winter. Thence being returned to Fort Delaware, he was paroled there after the capitulation of General Lee, June 27, 1865. One of his companions during the entire prison life was Lieut. Charles F. Crisp, of the same regiment, afterward the distinguished speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Since the close of hostilities Captain Finks has been engaged in the profession of teaching and surveying. He is organizer of the Farmers' alliance for Madison county and chairman of the Democratic county committee. In 1858 he was married to Miss J. F. Story, and they have five sons living.

James A. Fishburn, a well-known business man of Roanoke, Va., who rendered efficient service in the Confederate cause, is a native of Franklin county, where he was born in 1840 and reared and educated. Going to Alliance, Texas, in 1860, he entered the military service in that State at the outbreak of war, becoming a member of Company F of the Fourth Texas regiment. Shortly afterward he secured a transfer to Virginia, and the Fourth regiment also being sent to that field of war, he re-enlisted in Company F in April, 1862. He served as a private of this command during the remainder of the war, but in the early part of 1863 he was detailed to the quartermaster's department, and his services after that date were rendered in the very essential duty of caring for the army. He was stationed at Big Lick, now Roanoke, one year, and after that at Lynchburg, as headquarters, but his duties in obtaining forage, etc., made it necessary for him to travel