Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/760

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CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY.

coal and lumber trade in the city. He is also one of the principal stockholders in the Tidewater ice company. In 1892 he became the representative of his ward upon the Democratic executive committee, and was reappointed in 1894. In 1896 he was elected to a membership in the city council, and by his party was chosen chairman of the executive committee for the city organization. Both these positions he resigned on March 2, 1897, to accept from President Cleveland the appointment of postmaster of Norfolk. In 1890 Mr. Anderson was married to Miss Kate Nottingham, and they have four children.

William A. Anderson, a distinguished citizen of Lexington, Va., who participated with gallantry in the early achievements of the Stonewall brigade, was born in Botetourt county in 1842. At the passage of the ordinance of secession he was a student at Washington college, Lexington, and left that institution in April, for the military service of the State, as orderly-sergeant of the Liberty Hall Volunteers, which became Company I of the Fourth regiment of infantry. He participated with this command in the affair at Falling Waters, and in the battle of July 21, 1861, at Manassas, when he received a wound in the knee which confined him to his bed for five months and for years compelled him to resort to the use of crutches. Nevertheless, in 1864, while yet on crutches, he was a member of an artillery company formed in Albemarle county, of disabled soldiers, and saw some service there and with the home guards of Rockbridge county in raids against Averell and other Federal commanders. After the war he studied law in the university of Virginia, graduating in 1866, and since then has been engaged in the practice of his profession at Lexington. He has been prominent in political affairs, as a campaign speaker and for ten years as member of the State executive committee of the Democratic party. In 1869 he was elected to the State senate and served until 1873. Subsequently he was a member of the house from 1883 to 1885 and from 1887 to 1889. During the Paris exposition of 1888 he served as one of the United States commissioners, and prepared a report on the railway exhibit, transportation, etc. In recognition of his services he received a diploma and medal from the French government.

John S. Apperson, M. D., of Marion, Va., was born August 21, 1837, in Orange county, Va., and passed the first six years of his life upon the field where the bloody battle of Chancellorsville was fought a quarter of a century later. In 1859 he removed to Smyth county, and was engaged in the study of medicine when the crisis arrived between the North and South. Upon the day that Fort Sumter surrendered he enlisted as a private in the Smyth Blues, a volunteer organization which soon afterward was called to Richmond and thence sent to Harper's Ferry, where it became Company D of the Fourth Virginia infantry, brigade of Gen. T. J. Jackson, the "Stonewall brigade." Soon after reaching this rendezvous Private Apperson, on account of his professional acquirements, was detailed as hospital steward under Surgeon Harvey Black, with whom he served until just before the battle of Fredericksburg, when he was attached to the field infirmary of the Second corps, army of Northern Virginia, the first organized traveling infirmary of the civil war. It was a thoroughly equipped field hospital, acting intermediary to the field and general hospitals. In the course of