Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 5.djvu/207

 Rh Thomas Walker, believed to have been brothers, who came from Middlesex, England, probably between 1650 and 1660.

The will of Joseph Walker, of St. Margarets parish, Westminster, London, county Middlesex, probated in 1666, devised his property to his kinsman, "John Walker, now living in Virginia." This John Walker was a very prominent man, known as Colonel John Walker. He died about 1671, leaving six daughters. Colonel Thomas Walker, said to have been his brother, also a very prominent man, left sons. One of these sons was John Walker, who was the father of Dr. Thomas Walker, born in 1715, a noted explorer who saw Kentucky in 1750, and is said to have been the first white man who ever saw that section. Dr. Thomas Walker settled, certainly prior to 1742, in a section of country out of which has been carved the counties of Orange, Louisa and Albemarle. When the old Fredericksville parish was organized, in 1742, Dr. Thomas Walker was one of the first vestrymen, and in later years was succeeded in the vestry by three of his sons: Thomas, Jr., John and Francis.

Colonel John Walker, son of Dr. Thomas Walker, served in the revolutionary war on Washington's staff, and a younger son, Francis, also attained the rank of colonel.

Rev. James Maury married a Miss Walker, of this family, and named one of his sons Walker Maury. Matthew Maury also named one of his sons Walker Maury.

This old Walker family lived at Belvoir, and Walker's Church (named for them) was on the road from Orange Court House to Charlottesville.

On May 8, 1775, on a list of the committee of safety for Louisa county, appears as first man. Thomas Walker. Whether this was Dr. Walker, or his son, Thomas, who was then probably a man of thirty, cannot be definitely stated.

Dr. Thomas Walker is believed to have been the progenitor of all the Walker families of the section from which C. H. Walker comes, and the probabilities are that Charles H. Walker is in the fifth generation from him. In the absence, however, of recorded evidence this statement cannot be made as a definite fact. The coat-of-arms of the Walker family of county Middlesex is thus described by Burke:

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A peculiar feature of the Walker coats-of-arms in Great Britain is that a very great number of them show in their crests a grey-hound. The only way that one can account for this is that a majority of the families evidently claimed (or rather looked back to) a common ancestry.

The coat-of-arms of the Hughson family, Mr. Walker's maternal line, is thus described: "Parted per cross, gules and ermine, in the first quarter a lion rampant or, over all an eagle displayed of the last."

Charles H. Walker, "of Charlottesville, will not suffer by comparison with the distinguished members of the Walker family, because he has filled with fidelity every duty in life, and won for himself the respect and good will of the people among whom his life has been spent.

He was born at Louisa Court House, July 29, 1845, son of John W. and Martha (Hughson) Walker. His father was a railroad contractor of the firm of Mason & Walker. His maternal grandfather was Samuel Hughson, of the Green Springs section of Louisa county. His paternal grandfather, Austin Walker, lived in Piedmont, Virginia, and was the father of a numerous family. Somewhere between 1825 and 1830 he moved with his entire family to the west, with the exception of his two sons and one daughter, who remained in Virginia. During the war period 1861-1865, communication having become interrupted, Mr. Walker's people in Vrginia lost track of their relatives in the west.

Charles H. Walker attended John P. Thompson's Private School at Louisa, later he went to the Dinwiddle School at Greenwood, Virginia, and was a student at the Crenshaw School in Amelia county in 1863, when he quit school finally to enter the Confederate army. He became a member of that famous corps commanded by Colonel John S. Mosby, the great partisan officer of the war whose command won fame under the name of "Mosby's Battalion." On August 13, 1864 while taking his part in the capture of a wagon train at Berryville. Mr. Walker was severely wounded, but was fully recovered before the end of the war. The young man was not quite twenty-one at the close of that great struggle. He was