Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/681

 VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

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member of the Presbyterian church, and has been an elder in that church for thirty- years.

Thomas Foster Gaines. Members of this family are found of record in Virginia with- in the first fifty years of its existence as a colony. In i65'6 Thomas Gaines had a grant of one thousand and thirty acres in old Rappahannock county, and in 1665 Daniel Gaines and Nicholas Willard held jointly one thousand three hundred and seventy- six acres in the same county. Thomas Gaines had twenty-eight acres there in 1685, and Robert one hundred and eighty-six acres in 1688. William Gaines was in Lun- enburg county in 1755, and had two hun- dred and sixty-one acres in Culpeper county the following year, in which year Francis Gaines had three hundred and eighteen acres in the same county. Hieram Gaines was in Albemarle county in 1771. In 1779 Daniel Gaines was a vestryman of Lexington par- ish in Amherst county, and he was a major, and later colonel of militia before and dur- ing the revolution. Bernard Gaines, son of Daniel Gaines, was born June 22, 1767, in Amherst county, Virginia, and was a pioneer settler of Kentucky, dying in Woodford county, that state. James Gaines resided in Culpeper county, where his will, made May 24, 1 781, was probated March 20, 1786. He married Mary Pendleton, who died in 1803. They had children : Isabella, Henry, Jane, Richard Edmund, Joseph, Francis Thomas, Mary, Sarah, Catherine, James, William. The last named may have been the W^illiam Gaines mentioned below.

A\'illiam Gaines resided in Prince William county. Virginia, and was the father of Wil- liam Flenry Gaines, born there 1805, died February, 1885. He was for some years a grain merchant, and was subsequently for many years county judge of Fauquier county, Virginia. He married Mary Mil- dred Foster, born 1820, in Prince William county, survived him ten years, dying March i, 1895. She was a daughter of Thomas Foster, whose wife, a Miss Fair- fax, vas his cousin. Thomas Foster had sons : Thomas R., William G., Redmond, all of whom were soldiers in the army of the Confederate states during the civil war. By various marriages the family is connected with several of the "First Families of Vir- ginia." Other sons of William Gaines were

Cornelius and Redwood Gaines. The latter settled in Texas. William Henry Gaines had children: i. Elizabeth Fairfax, born 1851 at Warrenton, Virginia; married Colo- nel Thomas Smith, son of Governor WW- liam Smith, of Virginia, who filled the ex- ecutive chair during the civil war. 2. Gren- ville, born 1854; married Elizabeth Flarris, of New Orleans, Louisiana, and had chil- dren : Mary, Elizabeth. William Henry 3 William Flenry, born 1857; was engaged in the banking business with his brother, John Smith Gaines, at Warrenton, Virginia, and died in January, 1909, unmarried. 4. Thomas Foster, mentioned below. 5. John Smith, born 1864; married Mrs. Nellie (Clark) Ludlow, a widow, and they have a daughter, Mildred. 6. ]\Iary Leela, born 1872, in War- renton ; unmarried. 7. Cornelius F., born 1874 ; unmarried.

Thomas Foster Gaines, third son of Wil- liam Flenry and Mary Mildred (Foster) Gaines, was born October 30, 1862, in War- renton, Fauquier county, Virginia. He re- ceived instruction from private tutors, and from 1870 to 1872 was a student at the Bethel Military Academy. From 1875 to 1879 he attended Major Jones' Hanover Academy, and from 1880 to 1884 was a stu- dent at the L^niversity of Virginia. He sub- sequently attended the medical school con- nected with that institution, and from 1884 to 1886 was a student of the medical depart- ment of Columbia College. Through the breaking down of his health he failed to complete his medical course, and removed to California to recuperate. After one year his health was restored, and he returned to New York, and spent another year at the Columbia Medical School, but did not en- gage in practice. He became interested in the development of the phonograph when first brought out by Edison, and organized the Florida Phonograph Company, which he managed from 1889 to 1891. In the latter year he returned to New York City, and be- came interested in the real estate business, in which he has continued down to the pres- ent time. He was for nineteen years asso- ciated with DeSelding Brothers. On No- vember I, 191 3, he organized a company known as the Gaines & Drennan Company, with main office in East Twenty-sixth street. New York, engaged in the same line of business. Mr. Gaines is a member of the Hardware Club, the Southern Society of