Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/219

 Life and Character of W. L. Saunders. 213

being- wheeled about in a chair. In activity the gallant veteran must have been of commanding presence, and, erect, his stature more than six feet. He gave no intimation in countenance or voice of affliction, although he had a short time before arisen from a visitation of pros- tration and agony. Seated, amidst friends, in an easy chair, not another present was more animated. His habitually cheerful tem- perament was ever inspiring, and his friends, it is said, made his room their "headquarters" when they visited Raleigh. The writer, by request, remained several hours, during which time, Colo- nel Saunders held a delightful levee, many gentlemen of prominence calling upon him. With friends from his own State the prevailing familiar appellation was "Colonel Bill."

Onward from this meeting the writer felt that he had a warm per- sonal friend in Colonel Saunders, of whose regard he has cherished memorials, and whose death he deplores as a keen loss.

William Lawrence Saunders, son of Rev. Joseph Hubbard and Laura J. (Baker) Saunders, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, July 30, 1835, an d was of Virginian ancestry; his grandfather James Saunders being a grandson of Eben Saunders a native of England, who settled in Lancaster county, Virginia, about 1675.

His father dying whilst he was a lad, his mother removed, with her family to Chapel Hill, that she might educate her three sons at the university there, and he entered that institution in 1850 and graduated in the class of 1854. He subsequently read law and set- tled in Salisbury, where he for some time practiced his profession. He married in February, 1864, Miss Florida Gotten, of Raleigh, a sister of Mrs. Engelhard, whose husband, Major Joseph A. Engel- hard had been his life-long friend, who was afterward his associate in business, and his predecessor in the office of Secretary of State of North Carolina. His wife died about a year after their marriage. At the beginning of the war, i86i-'5, he entered service as a lieu- tenant in the Rowan Guards. He afterwards joined Reilly's Battery, and later raised a company for the Forty-sixth Regiment of North Carolina infantry, of which he became by regular promotion through all the grades, the colonel in 1864. He was wounded at Fredericks- burg, and afterwards at the second Battle of the Wilderness terribly, and it was feared fatally, in the mouth and throat.

As a guest of the late George S. Palmer, of Richmond, in the familiar residence, which stood on the site of the present handsome Commonwealth Club- House, he was tenderly nursed to recovery.