BOCOCK, Thomas Stanley (1815-1891), a
Representative from Virginia; born at Buckingham Court House, Buckingham (now
Appomattox) County, Va., May 18, 1815; educated by private tutors; was
graduated from Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, in 1838; studied law; was
admitted to the bar in 1840 and commenced practice at Buckingham Court House;
member of the State house of delegates 1842-1844; served as prosecuting
attorney of Appomattox County in 1845 and 1846; elected as a Democrat to the
Thirtieth and to the six succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1847-March 3, 1861);
chairman, Committee on Naval Affairs (Thirty-third and Thirty-fifth
Congresses); elected a Representative to the Confederate Congress in 1861,
being chosen speaker of that body February 18, 1862; again served as a member
of the State house of delegates 1877-1879; was a delegate to the Democratic
National Conventions in 1868, 1876, and 1880; died in Appomattox County, Va.,
on August 5, 1891; interment in Old Bocock Cemetery (private burying ground),
near Wildway, Va.
(Source: Biographical Directory of the US Congress
1774-Present)
MARCELLUS PALMER CHRISTIAN was
graduated in the Class of 1852. His parents were Henry A. Christian, and his
wife, Susan Palmer. His paternal grandfather, Henry Christian, was a captain
in the Revolutionary War.
He was born in Appomattox County, Virginia, in
1880, but his family were residents of Lynchburg when he entered the
Institute. After graduating, he took up the study of medicine, at the
University of Virginia, and was graduated there M. D. He afterwards pursued
his medical studies in New York City.
He entered
the United States Navy, and had risen to the rank of passed assistant surgeon
in 1861, when he resigned and tendered his services to his State and the
Confederacy. He was appointed assistant surgeon, C. S. Navy, July 18, 1861;
was promoted to passed assistant surgeon, October 25, 1862, and became surgeon
before the War ended.
In 1862, he married Nannie R. Davis, daughter of
Judge Micajah Davis, of Bedford City, Virginia. His only child died young.
After the War he returned to Lynchburg and practiced his profession in that
City until his death, November 19, 1879. He was greatly beloved.
(Source: The Military History of the Virginia Military Institute from
1839-1861, by: Jennings C. Wise, Publ: 1915. Transcribed by: Helen
Coughlin)
HON. CHARLES JAMES
FAULKNER
The subject of this brief
memorial was one of the great lawyers and most distinguished statesmen of the
States of Virginia and West Virginia. He was born at Martinsburg, Virginia, in
1806, and died in the city of his nativity, November 1, 1884. He was a man of
great learning and broad views, covering all branches of literature, science,
history, law and statesmanship. For a half century or more, he was considered
generally by the people of Virginia, as one of the greatest lawyers of the
entire South. He was originally a member of the Whig Party, but in 1852 he
felt that his party had abandoned its principles, and he became a Democrat and
supported Franklin Pierce for the Presidency of the Republic. For eight years
prior to the Civil War he represented what is now known in West Virginia as
the " Eastern Pan-handle " of the State, in the Congress of the United States.
However, before he entered politics he studied law, was admitted to the Bar
and had made himself a distinguished member of the legal profession, and was
heralded as such, not only throughout Virginia, but in many other portions of
the South. In Congress he took an active part in the public debates on
important questions that arose in legislation, and became generally known as a
Representative far above the average statesmen of that period. When James
Buchanan became President, he selected Mr. Faulkner, toward the end of his
term, as the Ambassador of the United States to Paris, France. He entered upon
the duties of this exalted station March 4, 1860, and discharged its onerous
duties with discretion and statesmanlike ability, until the change of
administration when he was recalled, and consequently returned to his native
country. Many political charges were preferred against Mr. Faulkner, but none
of them affecting his integrity and honor was sustained, and he emerged from
all the attacks absolutely unsullied and
unstained.
He was a man of the highest conceptions
of honor, dignity and character during his entire life, and exerted a wide
influence for the higher conceptions of life and duty among all the people who
had the honor of his acquaintance.
After his stay
of something more than a year in France, he returned to his native State, and
remained in comparative retirement until the close of the Civil War, studying national and
international questions at the home of his daughter in Appomattox County. When
all of the storm-clouds of war had blown away, he returned to his home at
Martinsburg. Berkeley County, and resumed the practice of law. The people,
however, would not allow him to remain in retirement, and he accordingly was
elected a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1872 to frame a new
Constitution for West Virginia, and was its temporary president. He was
elected a member of Congress from the Second Congressional District, and
served two years from March 4, 1875, to March 4, 1877, and declined a
re-election. This was his last public office. He had a large estate; was
President of the Agricultural Association of Berkeley County, and President of
the Martinsburg and Potomac Railroad Company up to the time of his death. He
had a very large law practice, chiefly in the Supreme Court of the United
States, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, and the Judicial
Circuit in which he resided.
He was one of the
most courteous, knightly gentlemen the writer ever knew, and bore the
confidence and respect of every person who knew him personally. He had a
family of several children — two of his sons were distinguished Circuit Court
Judges of the State, and one of them, Charles James Faulkner, Jr., was twelve
years a Senator in Congress from West Virginia, and has a large corporation
practice in the City of Washington, D. C., and is eminent in the
profession.
[Bench and Bar of West Virginia by George Wesley Atkinson, 1919
- Transcribed by AFOFG]
HENRY DELAWARE FLOOD, Democrat, of
Appomattox, was born in Appomattox County, Va., September 2, 1865; was
educated at Washington and Lee University and the University of Virginia,
graduating from the latter institution with the degree of bachelor of laws in
June, 1886; began the practice of the law on the 15th of September, 1886; was
elected to the house of delegates of the general assembly of Virginia from
Appomattox County in 1887 and reelected in 1889; was elected to the senate of
Virginia from the Eighteenth senatorial district in 1891, reelected in 1895,
and nominated and reelected without opposition in 1899; was elected attorney
for the Commonwealth for Appomattox County in 1891, 1895, and 1899; was a
Presidential elector from the Tenth Congressional district on the Cleveland
and Stevenson ticket in 1892 ; was nominated for Congress by the Democratic
party in 1896, and defeated by the Hon. Jacob Yost by a small majority; was
elected to the Fifty-seventh Congress, and reelected to the Fifty-eighth
Congress, receiving 8,819 votes, to 4,235 for James Lyons,
Republican.
[OFFICIAL CONGRESSIONAL DIRECTORY FOR THE USE OF THE UNITED
STATES SENATE , By A.J. HALFORD, 1903]
HERMAN
EVANT JONES, M. D.
Herman Evant Jones, M.
D., is one of the oldest and most prominent physicians in Roanoke from point
of service, and for a number of years he served the city faithfully and well
on both the old and new Boards of Health. Dr. Jones was born in Appomattox
County, Virginia, September 20th, 1860, being a son of James Chapman and Annie
O. (Williams) Jones, of Campbell County. At the age of ten years, the subject
of this sketch moved with his parents to Appomattox depot where as a boy he
attended the public schools, and when the family later removed to Appomattox
Courthouse, he of that place. He then attended the High School spent two years
at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, where he graduated in the
agricultural and literary departments. Later he attended the University of
Virginia where he studied academical chemistry and graduated in medicine in
1886. During the fall and summer of that year he went to New York where he
took a post-graduate and hospital course. He then located at Lowesville,
Virginia, where he spent nineteen months, and in June 1888, he came to
Roanoke, where he has since continuously practiced the profession of medicine
and surgery. In 1889 he attended the New York Polyclinics, taking a second
post-graduate course. He was a member of the old city Board of Health for
about seven years, and on the reorganization and the establishment of the new
health board, was appointed as a member and served one year after which he
resigned. For a period of two years he was assistant city
coroner.
From 1908 to 1911 he was associated with
Dr. J. C. Burks in the conduct of the Rebekah Sanitarium. During the latter
year he had erected the Jones Building on South Jefferson Street, where in the
month of October he opened a new hospital, designed and equipped for medical
and surgical gynaecology, the treatment of genito-urinary diseases, rest cure
cases, and degenerative and constitutional diseases. At the new Jones Hospital
a corps of trained and efficient help is maintained.
On December 16th,
1890, Dr. Jones married Eva Yates, daughter of the late Daniel C. and Minerva
Yates of Roanoke. He resides at 1102 Commerce Street,
Southwest.
[History of Roanoke County By George S. Jack, Edward Boyle
Jacobs; 1912 - Transcribed by K.T.]
PALMER, Edward
A., jurist and state senator, was born in Buckingham (now
Appomattox) county, Va.. July 1, 1825, son
of Dr. Reuben Darjarnett and Martha P. (Christian) Palmer. His father was an
eminent physician and planter, who served as surgeon and first lieutenant in
the war of 1812; surgeon in 7th Gray's regiment of Virginia militia, and first
lieutenant in Capt, John B. Royall's troop of cavalry, of Halifax county, Va.,
in 1st Holcomb's Virginia regiment. He was the son of Elias and Hannah (Le
Grand) Palmer; and his mother was daughter of John Le Grand, and granddaughter
of Pierre Le Grand and his wife, Jane Micheaux, Huguenots, who fled from
Bohain, France, in 1686, and settled in Virginia about 1700.
Elias Palmer was the son of Thomas Palmer of Halifax county, Va., who was a
descendant of Thomas Palmer, member of house of burgesses in 1629, and justice
in 1631-32 for tipper parts of Charles City county and Henrico county, Va.
Judge Edward A. Palmer's mother was a daughter of Henry and Martha (Patteson)
Christian of Amherst and Buckingham county, Va. Martha Patteson was daughter
of Jonathan, son of David Patteson of New Kent county, Va. Henry Christian was
a captain in the revolutionary war. He enlisted, Nov. 22, 1776, as a private
in the 10th Virginia regiment, commanded by
Col. Edward Stevens ; lie was captain under Col. Daniel Gaines of Amherst county, Va., who marched and joined the army under
La Fayette. Henry Christian's father was William Christian of Virginia, who was on the committee of safety for
Charles City county, Va., in 1774. He is descended from Thomas
Christian, the first American ancestor of the family, who came to Virginia in 1630. He
was descended from the Christians in the Isle of
Man, where they were, in 1422, the hereditary judges (deemsters)
in the island for a century. The name was originally McChristain, and in 1630
was first written Christian; their genealogy is traced to 900 A.D. Judge
Edward A. Palmer, the subject of this sketch, was graduated at the
Hampden-Sidney College in 1845, at the head of his class. On account of
delicate health he removed to Houston, Tex., in 1846, and began the practice of
law. He became one of the most distinguished lawyers in the state. He was in
the Texas
legislature (1852-54); was in the state senate (1855), and declined
re-election. His service in the senate was distinguished by his diligent
efforts in perfecting the school fund and internal improvement system, and
advocacy of doctrine of state rights, which were marked benefit to the stale.
In 1860 he was elected judge of the district, serving for three terms. He was
married, in Lynchburg,
Va., Dec. 3, 1846, to Martha
Winifred, daughter of Samuel and Winifred Jones (Guerrant) Branch. (For Mrs.
Palmer's genealogy, see Branch, Anthony Martin.) They had three children:
William Henry Palmer, H. Elizabeth Palmer (married, first, Edward Milby; after
his death, married Hon. Joseph C. Hutcheson) and Rosalie Heath Palmer (married
Sinclair Taliaferro). Judge Edward A. Palmer died in Houston, Tex., Jan. 15, 1862, being at that time
judge of the district.
[Source: The
National Cyclopaedia of American Biography Volume 8; By James Terry
White;
Publ. 1898;
Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack]
