Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/978

914 death of the Federal commander. At Norfolk Colonel Groner has had a very successful business career, becoming interested in various enterprises. Since 1890, when the Consolidated compress company was organized, he has served as its president. During the organization and session of the World's Columbian exposition at Chicago, he served as one of the two Virginia commissioners. His strength of character and extensive experience for forty years with public men and measures, have given him a wide influence, and made him a notable factor, since the war, in the history of Virginia. He is happily married to a daughter of the late Justice John A. Campbell, of the United States supreme court, and they have three sons.

Max Guggenheimer, of Lynchburg, one of the original members of the Lynchburg Home Guard, and since the war famous as a business man and for the valuable services he has rendered his adopted city, was born in Bavaria, May 19, 1842. Members of his family had settled in Virginia, in 1838, and in the year 1856, for the purpose of visiting these relatives and studying the English language, he came to Lynchburg, of which he has been a citizen since that date. He was a charter member of the Home Guard, organized in 1859, and at the age of nineteen years entered the service of Virginia in Company G of the Eleventh regiment. He served with this command during 1861 and the spring of 1862, participating in the battles of Blackburn's Ford, Manassas, Dranesville, Williamsburg and the Seven Days before Richmond. At the end of this arduous service he was suffering from a permanent physical disability which rendered him entirely unfit for duty on the field, and, not being a naturalized citizen, he was granted an honorable discharge. Returning to Lynchburg, he resumed his association with the business of his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Guggenheimer, and upon the death of the latter, in 1866, assumed control of the business, which, in a few years, assumed vast proportions. Gradually extending his interests into the wholesale trade, he had erected in 1881 the building his firm now occupies, and in 1885 closed out the largest retail dry goods house in the State that he might give his time entirely to the wholesale business. Prior to 1877 his firm jobbed shoes and boots exclusively. He then formed the firm of Watt & Watkins and after withdrawing from that firm in 1887 formed the firm of Craddock, Terry & Co., today the largest shoe jobbers of the South. In both of these firms he was a special partner. He is also interested in a large number of other enterprises, was a director of the Lynchburg national bank for twenty-five years, and is the president of the Lynchburg cotton mills. He has found time amid these engrossing activities to render substantial service in the improvement of the city, aiding materially in the building of the opera house, and in 1879 accepting election to the city council that he might aid more effectively in redeeming the city from an unfortunate financial condition, and in securing paved streets and a better school system. As head of the finance committee, he succeeded in floating the city improvement bonds at five per cent at par, the lowest rate at that time secured in the South since the war, and also aided in inaugurating a great improvement in the streets and schools. Six months ere he accepted the office of chairman of the finance committee, the city floated her six per