Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/69

 [From Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch.]

Died, on October 15, 1909, at "Millwood," near Farmville, Va., Major Andrew Reid Venable, Jr., formerly Adjutant and Inspector-General of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, in his seventy-seventh year.

"This fell sergeant, Death, is strict in his arrest," as Shakespeare tells us, and thus has been struck from the rolls of survivors of that glorious army the name of one of the noblest gentlemen and most daring soldiers who ever periled life for hearth and home and country.

But it is only from "the roll of survivors" that his name has been stricken, for on the deathless roll itself, his name shall blaze so long as freemen shall revere those stern and warlike virtues that make men strong to meet with unshaken front the very stroke of fate.

Born of an ancient and honorable race, distinguished from Colonial days for inflexible integrity, high courage and keen intellectual gifts—nourished in the most heroic traditions of the Commonwealth—he proved himself in every relation of life—as husband, father, kinsman and comrade—worthy of the noble stock from which he sprung.

His life before the war ("the war" to us beyond all other wars it must ever be), was uneventful—just the life of the average young Virginian of good family, "straining at the leash" and eager to get beyond the somnolent life of prosaic surroundings.

It may be told in few words, for his real life lay within the four years of war. He was born at the "Vineyard" (one of the old Venable estates), in Prince Edward county, on December 2, 1832, son of Samuel Woodson and Jane Reid Venable—was graduated from Hampden-Sidney College before he was twenty, in the class of 1852—disdained to settle down as "a small planter," and so "went West" to seek his fortunes, speedily deciding on St. Louis as his new home. There, owing to his