When I became nine years of age, my father concluded that it was best for me to break up this free and semi-nomadic life, and to send me from home to school. I had picked up the rudiments of education in a female school which had been established at home for the education of my two sisters, and which was taught by two Northern ladies, one a Miss Parsons, of Massachusetts, and the other a Miss Draper, of New York. Miss Draper was a sister of Dr. Draper, who subsequently became the famous professor and savant of the University of New York, but who, at that time, was Professor of Chemistry at Hampden-Sidney College in this State.
At that date it was almost the invariable custom to employ female teachers from the North, as Southern ladies were debarred by social status from engaging in such work. My sister's education, having been completed just at this era in my life, the school at home was adjourned sine die--another reason which made it imperative that I should seek other tutelage.
There were several male schools or academies in my native county, schools long established and of good repute. One of them, the Ebenezer Academy, was founded by Bishop Asbury (and to which, as will be seen, I finally drifted); but my father, for some reason, doubtless satisfactory, but which I never understood, selected a large boarding-school in Western North Carolina, in Leasburg, Caswell County, and taught by an excellent scholar and gentleman, the Rev. Lorenzo Lea. And to this school, on the 1st of January, 1838, two months before I entered on my 10th year, I was taken by my father and committed to the Rev. Mr. Lea, with many charges to him as to the care and management of his hopeful son, and much good and varied advice to me as to my conduct and behavior.
I had never left home before, or slept out of my mother's chamber; was known as a "mother's boy," and was petted and spoiled by her and my sisters, and colored mammy, and, barring my father, who alone held sway over me, considered myself Lord Proprietor of the house and its happenings. Only he who has jumped from such surroundings into the dormitory of a big boarding-school for boys can imagine the cold and icy plunge which engulfed my babyhood!
Well, after one session's buffeting I came out of that bath no longer a baby, but a boy, almost a man; if not in strength, yet in the wisdom of this world's ways, and--shall I add?--in wickedness.
I was utterly ignorant of what awaited me "at school," and left home with a lighter heart than I would have carried had I been aware of all that was before me. Besides, I was to ride a race-horse all the way to school, and that was the climax of my boyish ambition. My father, as was the habit of many gentlemen of Virginia of that day, bred racing stock, and he promised me, as an inducement to go, that I might ride a beautiful Lusborough filly, of an imported sire, an animal of great spirit, but kindly and gentle, and a splendid riding-horse. I was a young rider, but accustomed to horses, and to horseback exercise, from early recollection, and my father knew of my staying qualities and had no fear of my mount. He accompanied me in his gig, a two-wheeled concern, a homely analogue of the cart of today, upon which was strapped my little trunk, in which my mother, with many tears and misgivings, had packed my clothes and belongings. The butler (known then as dining-room servant) followed on another horse, both to add dignity to the cavalcade, and to render any attention or service that we might require.
It was more than an hundred miles from my father's to Leasburg, the place of our destination, and it was in January, with the winter roads of mud and water; but we made our journey in three days, not uncomfortably, and to me without fatigue. Indeed the trip to me was enjoyable, and the memory of that ride lingers amongst my pleasant things of the past. But not until I had been conducted from the village tavern, in Leasburg, to the boarding department of the academy, and saw my father file away on the road which looked toward home, followed by the butler leading my filly riderless, did the utter desolation of my condition strike me. I was no longer a man, but a child again, as I was only a child in form and in years, and I gave vent for the first time to a child's feelings and to a child's tears.
One object which my father had in taking me so far from home was to take me from my "mother's apron strings," as he called it, and to wean me from my dependence on, and my adoration of her. In that object he failed. My love for her was intensified, if such a thing were possible; she was never out of my thoughts by day or my dreams by night. I never laid down upon my bed, or even stood at rest upon the play-grounds, but that I religiously turned my face in the direction of that Mecca, that home which her life and her presence consecrated. And I looked forward to meeting her, when the session of the school ended and I should be permitted to go back, as the one idea of happiness which nothing could crown and nothing could displace.
I wish to record right here that always thereafter, though life brought me success, and a loving and beloved wife, and a devoted family, and applause and honor from men, yet nothing ever relit in my heart the fire which went out one tempestuous night in January just twenty years from that date, when, laying in my arms, she breathed her last. Again I wish to record here, that whatever has come to me since of pleasure, of interest, of profit, of advancement, there has always been something lacking which life could not fill. Even the physical world has been changed beyond reparation, and places that I knew and connected with her life have fallen out of my existence, and perished as islands sunken in some unknown sea.
Of all the precious memories which hallow my past, her last words linger as fresh to-day as when they fell from her dying lips: "My son, when I close my eyes tonight I do not care to awaken again, and before I sleep I wish to say to you, that as boy or man you have never grieved or distressed me.
But whilst this love of mother and of home was perhaps morbid, as some might think, I soon made friends of my schoolmates and enjoyed their association. The boys were like boys are everywhere, disposed to lord it over the smaller ones and the new scholars, but they never were guilty of the foolish and cowardly system of hazing such as prevails at the Virginia Military Institute and at West Point, and some other State-fed and self-asserting establishments. I never suffered an indignity to be put upon me without repelling it to the best of my ability, and though I always came off worsted, as the smallest and weakest boy in school, yet I always came off likewise with the decided respect of my adversary, and after a little while had no further personal affrays. Indeed, in a very short time my friends grew in numbers and in grace, and as it was always my pleasure to meet them with courtesy and kindness, I was soon dubbed with the soubriquet of "Gentleman John Claiborne."
I had forgotten this complimentary appellation until, some two years ago, I saw an article in a Raleigh paper, reminiscences of one of the "Old Boys" of the Leasburg Academy, in which he referred to me by that name.
When my first session of six months was ended, my father sent a servant and horse for me, and I turned my face homeward, no longer a child, though only ten years and a few months old, with a heart so happy at the prospect of again meeting my mother, that my joy was almost delirious. The first night after leaving Leasburg I stopped at Roxborough, North Carolina, and riding up to the hotel (tavern), called for rooms for self and servant.
The old gentleman who kept the hostelry was sitting on the long piazza, which seemed an organic part of every tavern of that day. He did not seem at all overcome by my presence, or abashed by my precocious audacity, but received me more than civilly, and, asking me to be seated near him, entered into conversation with me. I can not recall after sixty years the general subjects which engaged our attention, but one remark of his is fresh in my mind, as upon that soft summer afternoon in June, on my asking for some water, he startled me by saying that he had "never tasted a drop of water in twenty years"; that "water gave him the headache," and he was "compelled to drink whiskey in the place of it." His face attested the accuracy of his statement, and I was not surprised to hear some few years afterwards that even whiskey could not relieve his headache, and that the village tavern had fallen into other hands and my village boniface had fallen into the grave.
Another incident indelibly fixes that visit to Roxborough in my mind. Going out on the street (there was but one street in Roxborough at that time) I noticed on the counter of one of the stores a collection of hats, one of them quite tall and stylish-looking to me, and it at once occurred to me that that hat would not only add manly grace to my general get-up, but that it would be a revelation to the folks at home when they saw me approaching with so grand a head-piece.
To give completeness to the picture I should explain, it was the fashion of the boys at the Leasburg Academy to wear their hair cut short behind, shingled, it would be called now, and long in front, coming down, when parted, below the ears, sometimes as far as the collar. These were called "soap locks," the name being derived from the saponaceous material which was not infrequently applied to paste them in position.
Some of the fellows had full ambrosial locks worthy of Jove, and were the envy of the school. Not so, all of them, mine were thin and yellow, and obedient only to generous pasting. It was above these locks that I had set the crowning grace of my tall chapeau. So attired, I rode up on the evening of that day, after a day's journey, to a hotel in Boydton, Virginia, on my way home. But my mother was at the hotel awaiting me, having come partly with that object, and partly that my two sisters, just turned out, might attend the commencement exercises of Randolph-Macon College, which was then established near Boydton.
I will pass over the first glad greeting with which she received me and held me to her heart. This was in the public-room of the hotel. Almost immediately she ushered me into her private apartments, and, holding me off at arm's length, with a countenance in which a sense of horror and a sense of the ludicrous seemed striving for the mastery, she exclaimed: "My son, my son, where did you get that hat? And that hair?" Without a moment's delay, and with as much gentleness, perhaps, as the occasion called for, she removed the hat from my head. Calling for a pair of scissors, the hair soon followed the hat, my precious, long-trained locks. What became of hat or hair I never knew, for I never saw either afterwards.
After adjusting other parts of my attire more in accordance with what she deemed suitable for a boy of ten years of age than for a man of twenty-five, in which it seems I had glorified myself with a view of impressing the natives at home with my rapid strides to manhood, she presented me to her friends, in evident pride of her boy. But for myself, I must confess that I felt shorn of my gains; and as I contemplated my image in the mirror I recalled the picture of a young rooster that I had seen plucked of his feathers and slinking away to the barnyard.
After my vacation was ended (the vacation at that time covered four weeks), I returned to Leasburg, where I spent two more sessions of five months each without incident worth recording. At the expiration of that time, my health, which was never strong, became very feeble, and my father entered me as a scholar at the Ebenezer Academy, an institution to which I have before referred. This was five miles distant from home, and I rode horseback every morning, carrying my dinner in a little basket and my horse's dinner in a wallet or bag which was tied behind my saddle, returning every afternoon after school was "let out," as it was expressed at that day. As I was very fond of horseback riding, this arrangement was not only very agreeable to me, but was conducive to my health, which soon became quite robust.
For the first two sessions of the school after I entered it, Mr. Hogan was the teacher; an old Irishman, of fine classical education, and a good teacher and disciplinarian. He was a true believer of the old school in corporal punishment, not only for disobedience and mischief, but when he failed to impress a lesson on a boy's mind as he thought he should, he applied the birch without fail to that other portion of the body which has not been considered the seat of intellect.
After two sessions of my stay at the Ebenezer, Mr. Hogan left, and the school was taken charge of by a gentleman named Thompkins Rice. Mr. Rice was a Virginian and a native of Brunswick County, but he had been abroad for many years, and was educated at Oxford, England. He was also a fine scholar, and, with the exception of Prof. R. E. Rogers, and Prof. J. S. Davis, to whom, after some years, I recited at the University of Virginia, the best teacher that I ever met. He was, moreover, a very genial man, and was greatly beloved by the boys; but he never abated a jot of his dignity.
He also was a strict disciplinarian, and insisted upon perfect obedience to all rules of conduct and of study, and announced in the beginning that he would not tolerate a dunce or a dullard. If he appointed a task, and I must confess he was not a hard master in the number or length of the lessons, he saw that the task was completed perfectly; and if it was not, the boy who failed knew what to expect and his anticipations were certainly realized. Mr. Rice never lost his temper or his equilibrium, but with great grace and good humor he could plant a birch, without ever missing the mark, upon that portion of a boy's anatomy which the short jackets of that day seemed to expose for the especial purpose.
After two years, Mr. Rice succumbed to the charms of a handsome widow, whose ample means permitted him to retire from the chair of the pedagogue, and the Academy was again left without a teacher.
Our next master was a Mr. Lanier, a mild-mannered gentleman, no great scholar, but a good teacher, a man who made himself a companion to the boys in their sports, who won their love and ruled by love. Under his domination the rod ceased to appear.
At the expiration of two sessions I think another change was made in the teachers, but at that time, January, 1843, I was sent to Randolph-Macon College to enter the freshman class, half advanced.
I should add to this part of my narration that about the year 1840 or 1841 a young relative of mine, John R. Claiborne, having lost his father and mother, he, with his sister, S. Josephine Claiborne, several years younger than himself, was adopted into my father's family, and John Claiborne attended the Ebenezer Academy with me and went with me from there to college.
They were the children of Dr. Jas. B. Claiborne, of Brunswick County, who was not very closely related to my father; but Dr. Claiborne married my mother's sister, Jane Weldon, of Roanoke, and these children were my mother's nephew and niece. They were to me as brother and sister.
John, when he grew up to manhood, went to Central America, and died there in two years after he left home, at San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific Coast, in the service of the Nicarauguan Transit Company.
Josie lived to take care of, and to rear, my children after the death of their own mother, and, after they were grown, to comfort my father in his second widowhood, and until he died, in extreme old age, at my home in Petersburg. She survived him many years, and died under my roof, which had been her home virtually for twenty years, endeared to me as a sister, faithful and affectionate, and to my children as a mother, loving and dutiful, the only mother whom they ever remembered.
Our life at the Ebenezer Academy was rather quiet and humdrum. One enlivening incident is impressed upon my mind quite indelibly. There were some six or eight boys who rode on horseback to school, retaining their horses at the Academy and riding home after school was "let out" in the afternoon. This number made a very respectable company of cavalry, which we organized and trained as such. But in an evil hour, and led by that spirit of mischief which is born in every boy, we charged the infantry of the school one day as they formed for drill or play, and routed them with such serious consequences, riding over several of them, that a meeting of the Board of Trustees was called and we were disciplined.
My father was president of the Board of Trustees, but though a stern man himself, he had a keen eye for the picturesquely ludicrous, had been a lover of fun in his young days, and seeing more to amuse than to condemn in the heartrending details of the encounter, we escaped any serious infliction. Our cavalry company was disbanded, however, and we rode no more in company of fours, nor fell any more upon the flanks of the infantry.
How many of our little band, twenty years afterwards, rode with Fitz Lee, and with Stuart, and with Rosser, rode upon the serried squares of alien marauders on their homes and their country, I know not. As the war waged I would meet one of them sometimes, with the same firm seat in the saddle, the same spirit of dash and deviltry, but how many were left to tell to their children the story of battle and of bivouac is not recorded. I only know that I can not recall a single living one today. As far as I can learn, every one has responded to the last Long Roll, and every one has answered adsum, here, to the black sergeant, Death.
At the termination of the session of Randolph-Macon College, in June, 1845, my health had again become so impaired that my father concluded that it was best for me not to return to college. But as my health improved somewhat after a month's vacation, he sent me to Emory & Henry College, in Washington County, not only on account of the salubrity of the climate, but as that institution had been conducted as a labor school. He wished me to combine manual labor with the course of the institution.
At the time of my matriculation the manual labor feature of the school had been abandoned, and I only remained there about three months, and returned home. I made some warm friends, however, amongst them two young gentlemen from Alabama, named Clayton, one of whom became a general in the Confederate Army, but with whom I was never fortunate enough to meet. They were my room-mates.
It may be of interest to note that it took me, at that time, three days and nights of continuous staging to make the trip. It was not a dream of that day that an iron horse would climb the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains and speed his way at the rate of forty miles an hour.
At the commencement of the session of 1846 at Randolph-Macon College my health was so much improved that I again matriculated, and after two years was graduated with the degree of A. B. at the head of my class. The faculty, being unable to determine upon whom the first honor should be conferred, Mr. J. C. Granbery and myself having stood with equal grade for two years, settled the matter by lot. He drew the longest straw, and, I may remark, has kept it ever since. For some years he has been a distinguished divine and a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. As far as I can learn, he and I are the only surviving members of the graduating class of 1848.
After graduation came the momentous question of a choice of profession, a question that gave me great trouble. My tastes, my inclination, and my ambition led me to prefer the law. But my father, who had been educated at William & Mary College for the bar, and had practiced law up to middle life, and laid it aside after having achieved success, for reasons which seemed pertinent and powerful to him, bitterly opposed my following the same profession, urgently advising me to study medicine.
In obedience to his wishes, therefore, I matriculated at the University of Virginia in October, 1848, and took the medical ticket. I had by no means made up my mind to practice medicine, but I was young enough to give a year to the study of the profession, and I knew that by earnest application I could take the degree of M. D. in that time, which would not only be quite an addendum to a polite education but would greatly gratify my parents. I succeeded in my effort, and in July, 1849, was graduated with the degree of M. D.
At that day a student was not asked how long he had studied medicine, or if he had studied it at all, but at the expiration of the session an examination was placed upon the boards, and the candidate for graduation was required to write his replies to the questions. If he could answer correctly a certain percentum he was given his degree. And, forsooth, he was entitled to it. His knowledge of anatomy, of physiology, of materia medica, of chemistry, of medical jurisprudence, and of the theory of practice was tested and drained to the last drop; and the little piece of parchment, diploma, which was presented him, if successful, was a ready witness to his proficiency anywhere thereafter that he chose to take it. Of course there were few graduates many, throwing up the game in discouragement, as not worth the candle. Eleven, I think, were graduated in the class of seventy-two students of which I was a member.
From the University of Virginia I went to Philadelphia, spending the remainder of the year 1849, and a good part of 1850-”51, in seeking practical knowledge of the profession. I took a diploma from the Jefferson Medical College, from the Pennsylvania Hospital, and from the Philadelphia Obstetrical Institute, but I had no more trouble with examinations.
After graduating at the Jefferson Medical College, Dr. Thomas D. Mutter, Professor of Surgery in that institution, one of the most skillful surgeons and most accomplished gentlemen I ever knew, offered me a place on the staff of the surgical clinic of the college, one of my confreres being Dr. J. M. DaCosta, a young Spaniard or Cuban, who subsequently settled in Philadelphia, and rose to the head of the profession. I had just taken my place when my father summoned me home. He had met with unexpected reverses, and as I had one profession there was no time to consider the question of acquiring another, but pressing occasion to put into practice one which had cost me no little money and the elements of which I had pretty well mastered. So it is "that there is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may."
The next earnest and important question was, where to locate. That was a matter involving not only life's labor, but life's success or life's failure, possibly. Certain gentlemen in the town of Farmville and its vicinity, moved by what consideration I never knew, proposed to guarantee me the sum of twelve hundred dollars a year if I would settle in that section. One of these was Mr. Joseph E. Venable, who afterwards moved to Petersburg, and who was one of our most upright and honored citizens, and, to his death, one of my best patrons and most faithful friends.
I visited Farmville and called on and thanked my stranger friends, for they were all strangers to me; but I had pretty well determined to settle in some city, and the choice lay between Petersburg and Norfolk, as I had more friends and acquaintances in those cities than in any others of the Commonwealth. I visited Norfolk, which about that time was a sleepy burgh of some 12,000 to 15,000 people, lacking in enterprise, but abounding in social pleasures and distinguished for its hospitality and high living. I had letters to a Doctor Andrews, whom I found was not only considered the Nestor of the profession in that city, but almost the profession itself. I had never heard one man referred to so universally as head and shoulders above all others in the same line, and I suspect he deserved the distinction.
Unfortunately I met with quite a severe accident a few days after getting to Norfolk, and was compelled to trespass upon his time and consult his skill. He impressed me as a man thoroughly conversant with both medicine and surgery (I had recourse to him as a surgeon), but I was especially struck with the simplicity of his manner and of his treatment. In that perhaps consisted his true worth as a doctor, and to that he owed his undisputed and distinguished success.
I had two very good friends, old college chums, in Norfolk, Prof. O. H. P. Corprew and Mr. E. T. Hardy. Both received me kindly and hospitably, but I concluded that I would not like Norfolk as a place of residence. A fortunate conclusion. Four years afterwards Norfolk was swept with a fearful epidemic of yellow fever, more than half the local physicians dying, paying the penalty of their faithfulness with their lives. One of my classmates at the University and in Philadelphia, Dr. Junius Briggs, fell an early victim.
After leaving Norfolk I concluded to locate in Petersburg, and on the 1st day of January, 1851, I left my father's house in Brunswick County, and, making the trip of forty-five miles in one day, drove up to Powell's Hotel in the evening and registered my name and "at home." I came with two horses, driving one given me by my father, to a fine sulky, which had been made for me a few months before, costing $100, by Mr. Jno. H. Atkinson, whose carriage factory was located on Sycamore Street, just where Lewis & Bro. now have their stand. The other horse was ridden by my body-servant, Preston, a fine young negro man, given me by my grandfather.
I placed my horses in Ragland's Livery Stable, which occupied the locality where the China Palace and adjoining store now stand, and next to Powell's Hotel, which stood on the site the Iron Front building recently occupied. I engaged board for myself and servant at the above-named hostelry, then kept by Mr. Win. N. Friend, the father of our esteemed citizen, Mr. Alfred Friend, Sr., kept with prodigal munificence of store and larder which characterized the old tavern, where I made my pleasant home until two years afterwards, when I married and made my own home.
A few days afterwards I rented an office over the store of Todd & Christian, druggists, then occupying the store at the corner of Sycamore and Lombard streets, now occupied by Mr. John Trusheim as a confectionery and lodging-house. In doing so I bought out Dr. R. M. Anderson, who wished me better luck than he had had, saying that he had not been able to make a living there. This, I confess, was discouraging, as the doctor was a man not only of some experience in the profession, but a man of more than ordinary merit and acquirement. He moved to Dinwiddie County soon afterwards, where he was more successful, accumulating quite a competency to cheer and support the ripe old age to which he attained.
After three or four months of patient occupancy of my quarters, my clientele did not crowd my reception-room, as I had vainly imagined would be the case; and I began to fear that Dr. Anderson's fate awaited me.
I found it convenient, in order to eke out my failing finances, to sell one horse, as two horses were only a luxury, not a necessity demanded by my overcrowded work. Then, after another short interval I concluded that the constant attention of my servant in the ante-room was scarcely entirely necessary for the reception of the callers, whom I succeeded in apprising of my presence or absence by an ingenious reversible card, the invention, I suspect, of some impecunious person. On one side of this card, posted upon the door, was written "IN," on the other "OUT," with the hour of return noted. This device was so happy that I dispensed with the servant, hiring him out, thereby not only feeding him, but utilizing the wages of his hire for my own daily bread.
At the expiration of six months, reading one morning in the Scriptures that "a horse was a vain thing for safety," I began, in a moment of abundant leisure, to make a sort of an exegesis of the text, and, amongst other ideas suggested by reflection, it occurred to me that a horse was also a vain thing for a man to keep whose provender was exhausted. I could not send my horse to follow my servant, and make his own living, for two reasons: Firstly, he had a glass eye, by which he became generally well known, but which would not have militated against his usefulness had he not, secondly, manifested to all observers the most conspicuous habit of insubordination, so that it became the general remark that he was a horse that would allow no man to ride or drive him except the doctor who owned him.
I sent him, therefore, to the country, to my father's, to spend the summer, my father kindly offering to take care of him until the exigencies of my practice demanded his recall. I did not send for him again until the following winter.
Practice began to improve, and in addition I formed a co-partnership with Dr. R. L. Madison, an old college-mate of mine, who had settled in Petersburg some months after I did, and between us we felt that, jointly, we could bear the expense of a horse. But we only kept him a short time. During his long idleness he had "waxed fat," and was more incorrigible than ever in his deviltry, and I had to sell him. I sold him to a gentleman who was engaged, I think, in hauling railroad iron, but Glass Eye had made up his mind that he would submit to no such humiliating service as the drawing of a dray, and like an illustrious character in Scripture (Deuteronomy 32:15) who had "waxed fat" before him, he "kicked," and cutting a large artery in his leg, lost his life.
We soon secured a more docile Rosinante, business improved rapidly, and we felt that we were on the up grade. But as Dr. Madison and I were only together for a year or so, and now are about to part company, I can not leave this part of my story without testifying that a more honest, faithful, loyal friend, and a more genial, generous, great-hearted, and accomplished gentleman I never met. He was a great-nephew of President Madison, of the proudest and purest of old Virginia stock, modest and sensitive as a woman, but as brave as and a type of the Chevalier Bayard. He was a physician of high attainment, but ambitious to be and do more than was open before him in so limited a field as Petersburg.
Dr. Madison married, on the 3rd of May, 1853, a lady of great accomplishments, and as ambitious as himself, a Miss Leigh, of Orange County, Virginia, and removed to Philadelphia, where his talents and energy soon brought him into most favorable notice. His wife lived only a year, I think, after reaching Philadelphia, and two years afterwards he married Miss Helen Bannister of this city, a most estimable lady, a beauty, and a belle.
He remained in Philadelphia until the breaking out of the war between the States--the War of the Rebellion, as it was termed there, the especial home of hate and bitterness against the South, and the home of one Rev. Brooks, who afterwards became a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but who bore the savory reputation then, and there, of being a persecutor of any unfortunate rebel, man, woman, or child, who came under his power, and with a cruelty and malignity only measured by his opportunity of giving them distress. It is to be hoped that before he was called upon for the rendition of his final account he stumbled upon a text which he might have found in the great sermon of Paul, to the Athenians, on Mars Hill when he was declaring to them the Unknown God (Acts 17:30).
I enter no apology for this little digression.*
[Note : * To the Hon. Edwin G. Booth, of Philadelphia, formerly a citizen of Virginia, Southern prisoners, wherever they could be reached by him, were indebted for great kindness, and most liberal contributions of clothes, blankets, etc. And there may have been other friends in the City of Brotherly Love as kind as he, but I never heard of them. God knows who even gave a cup of cold water in his name, and God reigns, even yet, and there. Any one wishing to inquire further into this subject is referred to "United States Bonds," a book published by Rev. I. W. K. Handy, D. D., of Augusta County, Virginia, a journal of fifteen months confinement as a prisoner at Fort Delaware.]
At the breaking out of the war Dr. Madison came South, as did all its loyal sons, came home and struck with them for fireside and altar. He was elected Surgeon and Professor at the Virginia Military Institute, filling his place in war and in peace with distinguished credit to himself. He died some ten years subsequent to the restoration of the Union, in Thomasville, Georgia, whither he had gone trying to evade the Nemesis consumption, which had pursued to death his first wife, and her two lovely daughters, just as they budded into womanhood.
A loving letter from him as he was entering the dark scenes of the Great Unknown told me of the fearlessness with which he was meeting his last and only enemy, and of his perfect confidence in a higher and better life. In a few days came the announcement of his death.
"Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days;
None knew thee but to love thee,
None named thee but to praise."
Dr. Madison was not a native of Petersburg, but of Orange or Madison County, Virginia. Having lost his father at an early age, he came to Petersburg with his mother, who was a Miss Strachan, of this city, and with her lived with Mr. Robert Strachan on a farm near Butterworth's Bridge, at the head of Halifax Street. But he was educated in Petersburg, and his name should be listed upon the roll of the many sons of the old Cockade City whose virtuous and distinguished lives have given her preeminence amongst the cities of the Commonwealth.
JOHN HERBERT CLAIBORNE
Of the Surry Troop Light Horse Harry Lee's Legion, 1776
Published U.S. Legacies April 2003
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