Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/988

922 brigade, was born near Somerton, Nansemond county, October 23, 1842. His parents, Jethro and Susan (Phelps) Hamilton, were natives of the same county, his father of the same plantation. His grandfather, John Hamilton, was one of three brothers who came to Virginia from Scotland before the war of the Revolution and fought through that struggle in the Continental army, one of them falling a martyr in the sacred cause of liberty. Early in April, 1861, before the passage of the ordinance of secession by the Virginia legislature, Mr. Hamilton, at the age of eighteen years became a private in the Marion Rangers, an organization at Suffolk, which subsequently was assigned to the Sixteenth Virginia regiment of infantry as Company A under the command of Capt. Richard O. Whitehead. With this regiment Private Hamilton served throughout the war, sharing the campaigns and battles of Mahone's brigade, and Anderson's division. His experience was rich with adventure and danger, through which he bore himself as a manly and intrepid soldier. He participated in the battles of Malvern Hill, Second Manassas, Crampton Gap, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Salem Church, Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, Mine Run, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, Anderson's Farm near Hanover Junction, the Crater, and Hatcher's Run. He went through these battles without injury until the last year of the war, when he received three serious wounds: First at Hanover Junction May 27, 1864, by a minie ball in the right shoulder joint; second at the Crater on July 30, 1864, where he was struck by a piece of rifled shell in the left hip, which disabled him until January 18, 1865; third, a wound in the right hand and wrist, by a ten-pound rifled shell, received at Hatcher's Run, February 7, 1865. On account of the last injury he was given a furlough for sixty days, from February 22, 1865, and saw no more service, the few remaining weeks of the continuance of the war being spent by him with friends in the country, as he was unable to reach his home. He was paroled at Portsmouth, in July, and resumed his civil occupations. In 1869 he removed from Nansemond to Norfolk county, where he has since been engaged in market gardening. He is a member of Tom Smith camp of Confederate Veterans of Suffolk, and of the fraternities of Knights of Pythias and the Royal Arcanum. On December 31, 1874, he was married to Anna H. Love, and they have five children.

James W. Hammond, of Alexandria, a survivor of Mosby's command, was born in St. Mary's county, Md., June 16, 1843, but since 1855 has resided at Alexandria, where he was reared and educated after the age of twelve years. At twenty years of age he entered the service of the Confederate States, making his way through the Federal lines for the purpose, and enlisted as a private, in June, 1863, in Company B of the Forty-third Virginia cavalry, under command of Colonel Mosby. Previous to this time he had been a member of Kemper's battery, but, on account of physical disability, was rejected when that command was mustered into the Confederate service. His service with Mosby's command was brief but active. He participated, in the space of two months, in twenty-five or thirty skirmishes, and in the important raid at Fairfax Court House, where 29 of Mosby's men captured nearly 400 Federal soldiers and a large supply train. On the 17th of August, following his enlistment, he was wounded and captured, and, after