Tag: Civil War Generals

Wife of General Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb was born April 10, 1823. at Cherry Hill, the family plantation in Jefferson County, Georgia. His parents were John and Sarah Rootes Cobb, who were married at Fredericksburg, Virginia. His family moved to Athens, Georgia, while he was still a child, and he lived there for the rest of his life. Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb Confederate Politician Brigadier General in the Confederate Army Horace Bradley, Artist Thomas R. R. Cobb graduated from the University of Georgia first in his class in 1841, studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1842. During the 1840s and 1850s, Cobb and his older brother Howell Cobb – future Congressman and Secretary…

Wife of Union General Andrew Atkinson Humphreys Andrew Atkinson Humphreys was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 2, 1810, to a family prominent in naval architecture. Humphreys was descended from the distinguished naval architects who designed Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution, and her five sister frigates during the War of 1812, Constellation and many other ships of the Old Navy. Humphreys was born to privilege. As a teenager, he was wild and uncontrollable; he played truant and ran away from his tutors. General Andrew Humphreys In an effort to steer his son in a stable direction, his father secured the sixteen-year-old Andrew a place at West Point in 1827. Young Humphreys wasn’t ready for discipline. He earned demerits for not…

Wife of Confederate General Jerome Bonaparte Robertson Jerome Bonaparte Robertson was born on March 14, 1815, in Woodford County, Kentucky, the son of Cornelius and Clarissa Hill (Keech) Robertson. His father, a Scottish immigrant, died in 1819, leaving his mother almost penniless. Unable to properly support her family, she apprenticed eight-year-old Jerome to a hatter, who moved to St. Louis in 1824, and took the boy with him. Jerome Robertson Despite many hardships, Jerome Robertson eventually studied medicine at Transylvania University, where he graduated in 1835. With the Texas Revolution emerging as a national topic, Robertson joined a company of Kentucky volunteers as a lieutenant and made plans to travel to Texas. However, they were delayed in New Orleans and…

Wife of Confederate General William Mahone Otelia Butler was born on August 1, 1835, Otelia Butler was the daughter of Dr. Robert Butler of the town of Smithfield in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, and his second wife, Otelia Voinard, from Petersburg, Virginia. The Butler family was prominent, and Dr. Butler was serving as the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Virginia when he died in 1853. General William Mahone William Mahone was born on December 1, 1826, in Southampton County, Virginia, in the tiny community of Monroe, which was located on the Nottoway River in an area of large plantations. The river was an important transportation artery in the years before railroads served the area. William was nearly five years…

Wife of Confederate General Wade Hampton III Mary Singleton McDuffie was born on July 7, 1830, in South Carolina. Wade Hampton III, son of Wade II and Ann (Fitzsimmons) Hampton, was born on March 28, 1818, in Charleston, SC, the eldest son of a wealthy and prominent cotton plantation owner. Raised in the aristocratic class, Hampton’s family was one of the richest in the antebellum South. His father taught him how to hunt and fish, and he became an excellent horseman and an expert shot. General Wade Hampton Owning as many as 3000 slaves, who worked the family’s enormous holdings, Wade Hampton I was a member of the US House of Representatives, and served as major general during the War…

Wife of Union General and Senator Francis P. Blair, Jr. Francis Preston Blair, Jr. was born on February 19, 1821, in Lexington, Kentucky, into a prominent political family. His parents were Eliza Gist Blair and Francis Preston Blair Sr., who was a member of President Andrew Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet and advisor to several presidents. Young Frank was raised in Kentucky until nine years of age (1830), when the family moved to Washington, DC, where his father had been invited to edit The Congressional Globe. Apolline Alexander Blair Trained by his father for a public career, Frank Blair attended schools in Washington, DC. He was a bright but difficult student, who was expelled from several private schools. As a college student,…