James Read Branch, Class of 1848

Branch, son of long-time R-MC trustee Thomas Branch and brother of Thomas Plummer Branch and William Addison Branch, enlisted as a captain on May 11, 1861 in the Lee Life Guard of the 4th Battalion VA Infantry, also known as Captain James R. Branch's Company of the 12th VA Infantry. On July 1, 1861 this company became Co. K of the 16th VA Infantry. Branch transferred as captain with his company to the VA Light Artillery at his request on March 18, 1862. He was promoted to Major on May 14, 1863 and to Lieutenant Colonel on August 25, 1863. In March of 1865, he was retired from duty and was assigned to the Invalid Corps, not having been with his command since April 1864 due to an injury (leg broken in three places) sustained in Plymouth, NC. On March 31, 1865, he was assigned to the Ordnance Department in Richmond. This order was revoked the following day on the eve of the evacuation and fall of the city.  He was paroled at Greensboro, NC on May 1, 1865.

Prior to the war, Branch had been a teacher in Lunenburg County and then a banker and merchant in Petersburg, VA with a family firm, Thomas Branch and Sons. After the war, he was in banking in Thomas Branch and Sons in Richmond, VA. He was killed in a suspension bridge collapse on the James River on July 2, 1869. He is buried in Richmond, VA in Hollywood Cemetery.

Benjamin James Hawthorne, student 1858-1861

Hawthorne enlisted as 2nd lieutenant in Co. G of the 38th VA Infantry on December 11, 1861. He was wounded in the left arm in the Battle of Gettysburg during Pickett's Charge. He was promoted to captain on November 15, 1863, although he had previously served as captain from March-June 1863 int he absence of his captain. He was detailed from late November 1864 to early January 1865 as an enrolling officer. He surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

Afte the war, he moved to Baton Rouge, LA and taught at Collegiate Institute. He went to West Tennessee College in 1869 and served as its president in 1872. In 1873, Hawthorne moved to Corvallis, OR to teach at Corvallis College at the request of the college's president, Benjamin Lee Arnold, also an R-MC alumnus and veteran of the 38th VA Infantry. Corvallis College later became Oregon State University. Hawthorne moved to the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR in 1884, where he founded the psychology department. During his years as a college professor he taught numerous subjects including Latin and Greek, agriculture, English literature, psychology, mathematics, and chemistry. He retired from the university in 1908 and became a lawyer, passing the bar in 1911 and practicing nearly until his death at age 90. He died on February 3, 1928 and is buried in Masonic Cemetery in Eugene, OR.

Gideon Hunt Macon, student early 1850s

Macon, whose grandfather was the younger brother of Nathaniel Macon, after whom the college was named, attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania after leaving R-MC, graduating in 1854. He practiced medicine first in Warren County, NC and then in Halifax County, NC, where he was residing at the outbreak of the war. In 1861, he served as assistant surgeon for the 14th NC Infantry.  He assisted in the organization and outfitting of Co. A of this regiment, the Roanoke Minute Men, and signed documents as Lieutenant, Commissary, and Quartermaster of the company. Later biographies indicate he was surgeon for the 1st NC Regulars from February 2, 1862 through 1864, although on May 3, 1862 he requested to be exempted from service due to the need form his medical services at home in Halifax County.  By 1864, he also was serving as Justice of the Peace for Halifax County, NC.

Thomas Amis, Jr., student 1857-1858

Amis (variantly spelled Amiss), from Ouachita, AR enlisted as a private in Co. G of the 3rd AR Cavalry. No further information on him or his family, who had lived in Kentucky in 1850 and Arkansas in 1860, has yet been found.

Waddy Street, student 1838-1839

Street, a farmer in Lunenburg County, VA, enlisted as a private in Co. G of the 9th VA Cavalry on June 9, 1861. He was discharged for disability on June 26, 1861 in Ashland, VA, the postwar home of R-MC. According to his widow's pension application, he had contracted a fever which settled into one leg and disabled him for life.  The surgeon examining him in 1861 at the training camp in Ashland, however, indicates obesity as the cause, stating that "he is so corpulent as to find great difficulty in mounting and dismounting his horse."

After the war, Street returned to farming in Lunenburg County, VA. Street was a teacher in Lunenburg County, VA in the 1880 census. He died May 8, 1895 and is buried in Richmond, VA in Hollywood Cemetery.

Francis Duval Koonce, student 1854-1855

Koonce, who attended the University of North Carolina and studied law after leaving R-MC, was commissioned captain in "Koonce's State Guerrillas," which became Co. K of the 61st NC Infantry, on April 29, 1862. He was absent without leave through the fall of 1862 due to illness, and resigned on February 3, 1863.There is some indication that Koonce was a mail contractor for the CSA later in the war.

He practiced law in Onslow County, NC after the war. Koonce ran unsuccesfully for Congress in the 1880s. He died on April 10, 1911 and is buried in the Koonce Cemetery at Richlands in Onslow County, NC.

Giles Harris, Jr., student 1860-1863

Harris enlisted in the Lunenburg (VA) Light Artillery as a private in January 25, 1863. On January 28, 1865, he transferred to Co. E of the 3rd VA Cavalry.

Harris moved to Kentucky after the war where he initially farmed. In 1880, he was attending medical school in Louisville, KY. He graduated from the Transylvania University Medical Department in 1880 and practiced in Madison County, KY. He died August 10, 1913 and is buried in Richmond Cemetery in Richmond, KY.

Erasmus Kennon Harris, student 1852-1853

Harris attended the University of Virginia after leaving R-MC and was practicing law in Clarksville, VA at the beginning of the war. He enlisted as a private in Co. E of the 14th VA Infantry on May 12, 1861. He was hospitalized in Williamsburg, VA in December 1861 and was discharged for disability on February 13, 1861.  He was commissioned 2nd lieutenant of Co. I , 38th VA Infantry on April 29, 1862, a company he had joined in March 1862. He resigned from this company on June 28, 1862 due to ill health resulting from chronic diarrhea. He applied for a position with the CSA Treasury Department.

After the war, he returned to Mecklenburg County, VA and practiced law. He is believed to have died around 1875.

Fleming J. Hancock, student 1850-1851

Hancock was a physician in Spotsylvania County, VA at the beginning of the war. he enlisted as a surgoon on an unknown date, however, on November 28, 1861, he was"relieved from duty at the Main street Hospital and is assigned to the Ambulance train for the transportation of the sick from Manassas to this city," this city being Richmond, VA. On August 19,1862, serving, he was appointed Acting Assistant Surgeon at General Hospital Camp Winder in Richmond, VA.

After the war, he continued to practice medicien in Spotsylvania County, VA. He died July 8, 1898 and is buried in Hardyville, Middlesex County, VA in the cemetery at Clarksbury United Methodist Church.

Leonidas O. Rives, Class of 1854 (A.B.) and 1857 (A.M.)

Rives, a lawyer in Memphis, TN, enlisted as a sergeant in Co. A of the 4th TN Infantry on May 15, 1861. He was severely wounded at the Battle of Perryville, KY on October 8, 1862 and taken prisoner, and was absent through at least May 1864. He surrendered on May 4, 1865 at Citronelle, AL and was paroled at Grenada, MS on May 18, 1865.

Rives returned to practicing law in Memphis, TN after the war, where he is listed in city directories until 1874. His date of death is unknown, although John Hallum's 1895 book The Diary of an Old Lawyer states "he abandoned his profession and removed to his farm near Mason's depot, where he led the life of a morose recluse, ending it in suicide."