Allen, Henry Watkins (29 April 1820–22 April 1866), Confederate soldier and governor of Louisiana, was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, the son of Thomas Allen, a physician, and Ann Watkins. Allen and his family moved from Virginia to Ray County, Missouri, when he was thirteen. His father secured him a position working in a store, but Allen found business distasteful and enrolled in Marion College at age fifteen. At seventeen he ran away from college and traveled to Grand Gulf, Mississippi, where he became a tutor on a plantation a few miles outside of town. After tutoring for two years, Allen moved to Grand Gulf to open his own school and to study law. On 25 May 1841 he received his license to practice law in Mississippi. In 1842, when Allen was becoming an established lawyer in Mississippi, President ...
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Allen, Henry Watkins (1820-1866), Confederate soldier and governor of Louisiana
Kathryn D. Snavely
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Johnston, Albert Sidney (1803-1862), Confederate general
Wiley Sword
Johnston, Albert Sidney (02 February 1803–06 April 1862), Confederate general, was born in Washington, Kentucky, the son of John Johnston, a physician, and Abigail Harris. Raised by a stepmother following the death of his mother when he was three, Johnston aspired to follow in his father’s footsteps. He studied medicine at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he became a close friend of ...
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Morgan, John Hunt (1825-1864)
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Morgan, John Hunt (1825-1864), soldier and Confederate general
R. B. Rosenburg
Morgan, John Hunt (01 June 1825–04 September 1864), soldier and Confederate general, was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the son of Calvin Cogswell Morgan, a wholesale merchant and planter, and Henrietta Hunt, the daughter of an entrepreneur. When Morgan was six years old, his family relocated to Fayette County, Kentucky, near Lexington. He attended Transylvania University but was suspended for dueling and never completed his studies. During the Mexican War he served in a volunteer cavalry regiment that distinguished itself at Buena Vista in 1847. Desiring a career in the military but denied the opportunity, Morgan became a businessman, investing in hemp manufacturing and the woolen industry, as well as the slave trade. He also was active for several years in the Kentucky militia, forming a sixty-man company known as the “Lexington Rifles.” In 1848 Morgan had married Rebecca Bruce. After giving birth to a stillborn child, she lingered as an invalid for eight years prior to her death in July 1861. Seventeen months later, Morgan married twenty-one-year-old Martha Ready of Murfreesboro, Tennessee....
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Pike, Albert (1809-1891)
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Pike, Albert (1809-1891), lawyer, soldier, and Masonic scholar
Mark C. Carnes
Pike, Albert (29 December 1809–02 April 1891), lawyer, soldier, and Masonic scholar, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Pike, a cobbler, and Sarah Andrews. The boy was torn between his father, whose irreverence and drinking scandalized neighbors, and his mother, who read the Bible to her only son daily and planned on his entering the ministry. In 1813, seeking to supplement his income by farming, Benjamin Pike moved the family to Newburyport, Massachusetts. In 1825 Albert was sent to live with his uncle, a teacher at Framingham Academy, who soon learned that Pike had a prodigious memory that enabled him to digest large volumes and recall their contents at will; the boy learned Hebrew, Latin, and Greek almost effortlessly. Eight months after his arrival in Framingham, Pike passed the entrance examination for Harvard College. He could not afford the tuition, however, so, instead of enrolling at Harvard, he taught common school at Gloucester. The following year Harvard agreed to admit him as a junior, but school officials insisted that he pay the first two years’ tuition. Outraged, Pike abandoned his dreams of a formal education....
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Pryor, Roger Atkinson (1828-1919), journalist, Confederate soldier and jurist
Daniel E. Sutherland
Pryor, Roger Atkinson (19 July 1828–14 March 1919), journalist, Confederate soldier and jurist, was born in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, the son of Theodorick Bland Pryor, a lawyer, and Lucy Eppes Atkinson. His mother died before Pryor was two years old, so he was raised by his father, who had become a Presbyterian minister. Pryor attended the Classical Academy in Petersburg before entering Hampden-Sidney College in 1843, where he graduated as class valedictorian in 1845. He went on to study law at the University of Virginia for two years, taking his degree in 1847....
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Wise, Henry Alexander (1806-1876)
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Wise, Henry Alexander (1806-1876), congressman, governor, and Confederate general
Michael B. Chesson
Wise, Henry Alexander (03 December 1806–12 September 1876), congressman, governor, and Confederate general, was born on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in Drummondtown (now Accomac), the son of John Wise, a Federalist lawyer and legislator, and Sarah Corbin Cropper. Orphaned in 1812–1813, he was raised by relatives and had few resources other than a small inheritance. He received only a meager education until his admission in 1822 to Washington College (now Washington and Jefferson College) in Pennsylvania, where he graduated with first honors in 1825. He attended Chancellor ...
