Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/963

Rh camp, Confederate Veterans. On June 5, 1872, Judge Goolrick was married to Frances Bernard White, daughter of Capt. Chester B. White, U. S. A., who died in 1857 at Benicia barracks, California. Her mother was Frances Hooe, of King George county, a granddaughter of George Mason, of Gunston, the author of the Virginia bill of rights and the intimate friend of General Washington. Mrs. Goolrick succeeded her mother as president of the Confederate memorial society of Fredericksburg and served several years as vice-president for Virginia, of the National Martha Washington monument association.

Lieutenant John Wotton Gordon, of Richmond, was born March 25, 1847, at Hertford, Perquimans county, N. C. His grandfather was John Copeland Gordon, a wealthy planter at Woodlawn, N. C., and the grandfather of the latter, coming from Loch Lomond, Scotland, founded the family in America. His father, George Bradford Gordon, a graduate of the State university and a lawyer by profession, maintained a plantation near Gatesville, N. C., where young Gordon was reared and prepared for college. At the age of fourteen, the State having seceded from the Union, he sought permission to enter one of the volunteer military companies, but was instead sent to the Hillsboro military academy. Returning, in the fall of 1862, to his home, then within the Federal lines, he determined to join the Confederate forces, and, in January, 1863, mounted upon a pet mare of his own rearing, he passed the picket line at Franklin, Va., and rode alone toward the lines of the army of Northern Virginia. Near Drewry's bluff he fell in with a squadron of cavalry, with whom he began his military career at the age of fifteen years. On January 20, 1863, he enlisted as a private in Company C, Second North Carolina cavalry, which, with the Ninth, Tenth, Thirteenth and Fifteenth Virginia regiments, composed the brigade of Gen. W. H. F. Lee. Soon afterward he engaged in Longstreet's siege of Suffolk and had the pleasure of doing his first fighting against regiments of Federal cavalry which had pillaged his father's home. In this campaign, during a fight on the Nansemond river, while acting as courier for General McLaws, bearing a dispatch across a newly plowed field, under fire of the enemy's sharpshooters, Gordon and his horse were nearly buried in the mud thrown by a shell which exploded upon the ground a few feet before them. His gallantry and daring resulted in his clothing being several times pierced by minie balls which sought closer touch, and, at Brandy Station, June 9, 1863, he was disabled by two wounds and fell into the hands of the enemy. After four weeks in hospital at Alexandria, he was confined as a prisoner of war at the Old Capitol prison and at Point Lookout until his exchange in February, 1864. On his return to the ranks he was promoted corporal, and sergeant, and finally aide-de-camp, with rank of first lieutenant, on the staff of Gen. W. P. Roberts, a gallant soldier who had rapidly risen from the rank of orderly in Gordon's company to the command of a brigade. Except when wounded and in prison Lieutenant Gordon never missed a day's duty nor any of the engagements of his regiment, among which, besides those mentioned, were the battles of Beaver Dam, Ashland, Yellow Tavern, North Anna, White Oak Swamp, Hanover, Hawe's Shop, Salem Church, Samaria, Malvern Hill, Reams' Station and other affairs on the Weldon railroad,