Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/196

188 Very soon after matters had become well ordered at the naval hospital grounds Gov. Letcher appointed and assigned to the, Third regiment, Virginia volunteers, Col. Roger A. Pryor, and his field officers and assigned Col. James Gregory Hodges, Lieut. Col. David J. Godwin and Maj. William White to the Fourteenth Virginia regiment. This was done on the alleged policy that it is better for a colonel to command a regiment of strangers than a regiment of his personal friends. Maj. William C. Wingfield and the other staff officers of the old Third Virginia regiment resigned and afterwards did distinguished service under other commands.

Col. Hodges with his regiment was ordered to take command of Jamestown Island, and we find that on the 31st day of May, 1861, he was there in command not only of his own regiment of ten companies but also of five companies of artillery and two additional companies of infantry. His adjutant at this time was Lieut. Evans.

This assignment of Col. Hodges to the Fourteenth Virginia regiment and to the command of Jamestown Island took him from his home from the companionship of his wife and two infant boys. On the nth day of August, 1853, he married Sarah A. F. Wilson, the daughter of William H. Wilson and Ellen Keeling. His son, William Wilson Hodges, was born on the 29th of April, 1854, and his son, John Nelson Hodges, was born on the 3rd of May, when he was in command at the Naval Hospital grounds, and he gave to his little baby son the name of Nelson, after Fort Nelson, erected on those grounds in the revolution. To him and to his wife it was a most painful separation, yet bravely and cheerfully borne in the spirit of patriotic duty to their country. His letters to his wife were ever full of the most devoted love to her and of the keenest, tenderest interest in his two infant children, whom he calls so dearly "my boys." There was an ever intense longing to be with his wife and children and always the firm recognition of his duty to be ever with his regiment.

On August i, 1861, Gen. Magruder ordered Col. Hodges to take six companies of his regiment and to join him in the lower part of the Peninsula. Gen. Magruder with 5,000 men, made a