Richard Irby, Class of 1844

Irby was a farmer and ran a foundry making farming implements in Nottoway County, VA when he was commissioned as first lieutenant on April 22, 1861 in Co. G of the 18th VA Infantry, the Nottoway Grays. He resigned his commission in November 1861 when he was elected to the Virginia legislature as a representative in the House of Delegates. He resigned his elected office in the spring of 1862 and reenlisted.  He was promoted to captain on March 29, 1862, taking command of the company on April 23, 1862. He was wounded in the neck and breast on August 30, 1862 at the Battle of Second Manassas. He was hospitalized on September 4, 1862 in Farmville, VA, where his wound is recorded as a gunshot wound in the shoulder, and then sent to Lynchburg, VA. He was placed on detached service in January 1863, and resigned from his company on June 26, 1863 and was transferred to the commissary department retaining his rank as captain. He was captured at Blacks and Whites, now Blackstone, VA on April 19, 1865.  He took the oath of allegiance on July 17, 1865 at Nottoway Court House, VA.


After the war, he resumed farming in Nottoway County, VA. He became president of Petersburg Iron Works in 1867, and became a partner in  a Richmond stove manufacturing business in 1868.  Irby later moved to Ashland and was R-MC's Secretary and Treasurer from 1886 until 1902, resigning shortly before his death. He also served as a trustee of the college for 50 years. He was the author of the first history of R-MC in the late 1890s and the college has him to thank for collecting and preserving many of its old records, and for his extensive correspondence with alumni. Irby's History of  Randolph-Macon College, Virginia (available online) only briefly touches upon the war and its effect upon the college. The Captain, as he was known to the Randolph-Macon College community for the rest of his life, published a regimental history in 1878, Historical Sketch of the Nottoway Grays: Afterwards Company G, Eighteenth Virginia Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia (available online), which is in the College Archives. The college's copy is inscribed to “His old friend and fellow Pilgrim,” Leroy S. Edwards. The Captain died on July 4, 1902 and is buried in Lakeview Cemetery in Blackstone, Nottoway County, VA.