Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/17

 VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

Robert Alonzo Brock. To enumerate the activities of Mr. Brock would require a volume, so long continued and valuable has been his public service. No historian of the future, writing of Richmond or Virginia, but will be indebted to him for painstaking, well-preserved search. He is passionately devoted to everything that bears upon the antiquities of the state, and no man of his day has done more to promote their investigation and study. Eleven volumes of the reports of the Virginia Historical Society bear his name as secretary of that society, as secretary of the Southern Historical Society his work has been valuable, and as historian and register of the Virginia Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, he has rendered a service that will never be forgotten. As business man, antiquarian, historian and genealogist, his whole career has been connected with the city of Richmond, although since 1881 he has surrendered all other interests to devote himself to study and research among the records and antiquities of Virginia. He is a member of seventy of the learned societies of the United States and Europe, his reputation far overreaching state bounds. When Junin Winson was preparing his now standard reference work, "Narrative and Critical History of America." Mr. Brock was selected to write the chapters on Virginia. A notable feature of his work was his connection with the "Richmond Standard" as associate editor, 1879 to 1882.

Robert Alonzo Brock was born in Richmond, Virginia, March 9. 1839, son of Robert King Brock, born 1801, and Elizabeth Mildred (Ragland) Brock, both of Hanover county, Virginia, paternal grandson of John Phillips Brock, maternal grandson of Fendall Ragland. The Raglands descend from John and Anne (Beaufort) Ragland, who came from Glamorganshire. Wales, in 1720, and settled in what is now Hanover county, Virginia, then a part of New Kent county. Robert King Brock was a prosperous merchant of Richmond, a man of noble and upright character, whose influence over his son was most beneficial. His wife was also a woman of strong character, and in the training of her son developed those traits that have been prominent in securing him recognition as the highest authority of Virginia antiquities, early history and family pedigrees.

As a boy, Robert A. Brock was passionately fond of reading, and early developed a love of antiquities. At the age of thirteen he left school, entering the employ of uncles engaged heavily in the lumber business, using his wages in the purchase of books of various kinds. He later engaged in business for himself, but when war broke out between the states he enlisted in the First Company, Twenty-first Regiment Virginia Infantry, serving actively one year, being connected with Winder Hospital during the remainder of the cruel struggle. He returned to mercantile life after the war, engaging in the lumber business from 1865 to 1881 with considerable success. In 1875 he was elected corresponding secretary of the Virginia Historical Society, and in 1881 retired from business to devote himself entirely to study and research. In 1887 he was elected secretary of the Southern Historical Society, which position he yet retains. From 1879 to 1883 he was associate editor of the "Richmond Standard." He retired from the secretarial position he held in the Virginia Historical Society in 1893, but the eleven volumes of the reports of that society that he prepared will forever link his name with the society and perpetuate his fame among students of Virginia history. His work as secretary of the Southern Historical Society has been equally valuable, twenty-two volumes of its reports, and many of the otherwise unpublished details of the great civil war have been preserved by him in the society records. A wonderful, valuable collection of newspaper cuttings, relating to the war. has been preserved by Mr. Brock, by pasting them on substantial paper and binding in book form. The writings of Mr. Brock