Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/226

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

tory in Medical Chemistry" (1882); •"Med- ical Physics" (1885) ; and many articles in the "American Journal of Sciences." He (lied in New York, December 20, 1885.

Dabney, Virginius, born in Gloucester CDiinty. N'irginia. February 15, 1835. He en- tered the University of Virginia in 1852, where he studied for several years, being the compeer of Bishop Thomas Hugh Dudley, Thomas R. Price and other distinguished alumni. Upon leaving the university he be- gan the practice of the law, but left it to lie- cnme a teacher. He was a staff officer during the civil war. with the rank of captain, in the Confederate army. After the war he estab- lished in Xew York City a boys' school, where he had great success as a teacher. At the time of his death he held a position in the New York custom house. He was ever a genial companion, and a brilliant raconteur in any company. He published the striking novel, "The Story of Don Miff, a Symphony of Life," a striking picture of the old regime in Virginia. Professor Thomas R. Price, his lifelong friend, wrote of him as follows : "His mind had two special qualities : the one was his peculiar gift of imaginative humor, revealing itself in strong delightful freaks of language, in happy terms of picturesque expression, in penetrating glimpses of char- acter reading, and delicious bits of story telling. The other was the massive origi- nality of his philosophical thinking, his power to understand things and explain things by philosophical analysis. His mind was a storehouse of original imagination, of shrewd and delightful reasoning and of definite philosophical conception. A fallacy could not live under the light of his eyes. A falsehood or a false pretence flashed into

sudden deformity under the illumination of his humorous exposure." He died June 2, 1894. and was buried at the University of \'irginia.

Smith, Thomas, born at Culpeper Court House, August 25, 1836, son of William Smith and Elizabeth Hansborough Bell, his wife. His father was twice governor of \'irginia — first in 1845, and again in 1864. .•\t the beginning of the war between the states, he was commissioned colonel of Vir- ginia volunteers, and organized the Forty- ninth \'irginia Regiment, transferred later to the Army of the Confederacy, and was ai>pointed by the President of the Confed- eiate States to the positions of brigadier- general and major-general, without appli- cation for such promotion. Thomas Smith acquired an academic education in W'arren- tt'n. \'irginia, and in Washington, D. C, arid afterward became a student in William and Mary College, from which he was grad- uated. He prepared for the bar in the law department of the University of \^irginia, where he spent the years of 1856-57 and I '^57-5^- Successfully passing the examina- tion which entitled him to practice in the courts of \^irginia, he removed to Charles- tcm, Kanawha county, then a part of Vir- ginia, where he remained until the outbreak of the civil war. He enlisted as a private in the Kanawha Riflemen ; soon became ad- jutant-general of the Virginia forces in the Kanawha \'alley, and was subsequently made major of the Thirty-sixth Virginia Regiment, with which rank he was serving when Floyd's command was sent to Fort Donelson. At the head of his regiment he took a battery, and armed his men with cap- tured F.nfield rifles, .\ftcr the surrender of