Gens. Horace Poiter, Wesley Merritt, James H. Wilson and Pennington of the Union army and Ramseur of the Confederate army. In 1861 he resigned his Federal commission and entered the Confederate service, becoming captain of a company of artillery known as "Huger's Battery." He served at Norfolk, and subsequently was attached to the division of his father under Longstreet's command during the Seven Days' battles. Promoted major of Alexander's battalion of artillery of Longstreet's corps, he rose to the rank of colonel and command of the battalion when Alexander was made brigadier-general and chief of artillery under Longstreet. Under his command the battalion maintained the high reputation it had achieved under Stephen D. Lee and E. P. Alexander. His war service embraced all the campaigns of the First corps of the army of Northern Virginia, including Chickamauga and east Tennessee. At the disastrous battle of Sailor's Creek, a few days before Appomattox, he was captured by General Custer, a former comrade at West Point. After the close of the war he was employed as secretary of the Norfolk & Petersburg railroad, was subsequently superintendent of the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio railroad, and at the time of his death he was superintendent of transportation of the Norfolk & Western railroad. He was married to Miss Julia Trible, of Lynchburg, who with four children, survive him.
John T. Hughes, sheriff of the city of Richmond, is a native of Gloucester county, where his ancestors have resided for several generations. His father, John W. Hughes, was born there in 1817, the son of John Hughes, whose father served with the rank of major in the war of the Revolution. Sheriff Hughes was born in March, 1847, and when four years of age went with his family to Richmond, where he received his education. At the outbreak of the war he was still too young for service, but, in the last year of the struggle, when approaching his seventeenth birthday, he enlisted as a private in Company C of the Twenty-fourth Virginia cavalry, in February, 1865, and was engaged, in hard fighting on the Charles City road below Richmond and on the retreat from Richmond to Appomattox, where he surrendered and was paroled with the army. Having done what he could for the Confederate cause, he returned home and began business life as a wagon driver in Richmond. In 1866 he secured employment with the Mutual building fund and dollar savings bank, and was subsequently promoted to assistant cashier, serving in that capacity for three years. He then embarked in the commission business, meeting with success and at the same time became prominent in municipal affairs and in political life. For four years he served in the lower branch of the city council, and, in 1890, was elected alderman for a term of four years. The latter office he resigned in 1892 to accept the position of sheriff, to which he was re-elected for a term of four years in 1894. He maintains his comradeship with the survivors of the army by membership in both the R. E. Lee and George E. Pickett camps of Confederate Veterans, and is connected with the civil orders of the Mystic Shrine, the Red Men, the Elks, the Ancient Essenic order and the Good Fellows and Heptasophs. He is a member of the Methodist church South. He was married in 1871 to Julia S., daughter of the late William Stoakes of Matthews county, and they have five children; William McCaw, Harriet C, John T. Jr., Lucy C. A., and Walter C.
