Willis J. Lee, a citizen of Nansemond, who gave four years of his youth to the service of the Confederate States as a soldier of the army of Northern Virginia, was born in the county where he now resides, January 12, 1846. His father, P. H. Lee, a native of Virginia, was engaged in dealing in naval stores in Georgia before the war, and, at the outbreak of the conflict between the North and South, entered the Confederate service as captain of Company I of the Thirteenth Virginia regiment. He continued to hold this rank until he was compelled to retire on account of a severe injury to his foot, which disabled him for further service. Since then he has given his attention to farming and the commission business at Norfolk. Though Willis J. Lee was but fifteen years of age when his State united with the Confederacy and was invaded by the Federal forces, he enlisted, in 1861, and, during the four years which followed proved himself a thorough soldier, enduring great fatigues and hardships and manifesting the courage of a hero on many bloody fields. He became a private in the company commanded by his father, and served in the ranks until the close of the war, participating in all the engagements of his regiment from the Peninsula to Gettysburg, and from the Wilderness to Appomattox. Finally being paroled when the army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms, he returned to his home to begin the duties of civil life, having achieved the honors of a veteran at the age of nineteen years. For two years he was engaged in the production of turpentine and naval stores in Georgia, after which he returned to Nansemond county, and, purchasing land, began his career as a farmer, in which he has been notably successful. It is pleasing to note that he has now one of the handsomest residences in his region, delightfully located upon a farm of three hundred and fifty acres on Hampton Roads, at the mouth of the Nansemond river, with conveniences for shipping his products to the great markets. He is also a director of the Farmer's bank of Nansemond, is a member of the Christian church, and is a comrade of Tom Smith camp, United Confederate Veterans, at Suffolk. Soon after the war he was happily married to Mary J., daughter of William H. Jones.
Hezekiah Gilbert Leigh, M. D., since 1857 a prominent physician of Petersburg, Va., except during the period in which he served as a surgeon in the Confederate army, was born in Mecklenburg county, March 12, 1833. His family, of English descent, has long been resident in the South, first settling in eastern Virginia and thence removing to North Carolina. In the latter State his great-grandparents, Gilbert and Elizabeth Leigh, were born. Their son, Richard Leigh, born in Perquimans county, 1773, died in 1833, married Charlotte Spruill. Their oldest son, Rev. Hezekiah G. Leigh, D. D., father of Dr. Leigh, was born in 1795. He gave his life to the service of the Methodist church, and being a man of splendid physique and high scholarly attainments, and gifted with a remarkable power of eloquence, he became one of the most distinguished and widely known ministers of his period. He also is entitled to honorable fame as the founder of the celebrated Randolph-Macon college. He died in 1853, leaving surviving him his wife, Mary Jane, the daughter of Col. Richard Crump, of Northampton, N. C., and six children: Richard Watson, a gallant Confederate
