Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/953

Rh of assessor and collector of taxes and for about sixteen years the office of commissioner of revenue. He is a valued comrade of the Urquhart-Gillette camp, United Confederate Veterans. On March 29, 1866, he was married to Elizabeth Rosa Bryant, who died April 18, 1891, leaving five children, Ann E., Josiah B., Antoinette A., Rosa M. and Lee A.

R. R. Gee, of Petersburg, Va., now prominent in the business of life insurance in that State, is one of three brothers who served in the army of Northern Virginia. Their father, Henry Gee, a wealthy farmer of Prince George county, served with the Virginia troops in the war of 1812 and died prior to the Confederate era. One of these brothers, Lieut. John Gee, was a member of the Petersburg cavalry company, under Captain Goodwin, and, surviving the struggle, was subsequently engaged in mercantile pursuits until his death. Another, Lieut. Winfield S. Gee, served in the Forty-first Virginia infantry, Mahone's brigade, until he fell while commanding his company in the terrible fight at the Crater on the Petersburg lines. R. R. Gee, the survivor, who cherishes the memory of these gallant brothers, was born in Prince George county in 1831. He was engaged in farming, in charge of the family homestead, until 1864, when he enlisted in Company E of the Twelfth Virginia infantry, Mahone's division, and shared the arduous service of the command in the trenches before Petersburg, and its various severe battles, until the surrender at Appomattox. He returned then to his vocation as a farmer, and continued to be thus engaged until 1885, when he removed to Petersburg and became connected with the life insurance company of Virginia. For about ten years past he has held the position of superintendent of that company. He has also extensive property interests, which have largely increased in value under his skillful business management. He maintains a membership in A. P. Hill camp, Confederate Veterans.

William Pate Gibbs, a prominent wholesale merchant of Lynchburg, is a native of Bedford county, where he was born in 1843 and reared and educated. Early in 1861 he became a member of the Bedford light artillery, which was made Company A of Stephen D. Lee's battalion just before the opening of the Seven Days' battles before Richmond. Mr. Gibbs entered the service as a private and was promoted corporal. He participated in the many battles and campaigns in which the battalion was engaged from the beginning until the close of the war, his first actions being at York town, and the battles around Richmond. After fighting through the Peninsular campaign, and the second battle of Manassas, he was engaged at Sharpsburg, Md., in the great combat of September 17, 1862, and subsequently did effective service at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg on the second and third days. Going west with Longstreet's command, he fought at Chickamauga, and, after his return to Virginia, was actively engaged in the Wilderness and fought fourteen days at Spottsylvania, serving on the left of the "bloody angle." In the defense of Petersburg he served for several months on the Howlett house line. In March, 1865, he was detailed with others to procure forage for the army, and was engaged on that special service in the last dark days of defeat and surrender. After the fall of the Southern cause he returned to his home and resided in Bedford county until 1872, when he