James Harvey Wood

He entered the Virginia Military Institute in July 1860 and in the Spring of 1861 was assigned as Drillmaster in Richmond, VA and at Camp Bartow with the 37th Virginia Infantry. On 3 March 1862, age 20, he enlisted and mustered as Private, Company D, 37th Virginia Infantry in Estillville, VA. He was commissioned First Lieutenant (his brother Henry C. Wood was Captain) on 22 April 1862. He was appointed Adjutant 23 May 1862 but resigned that position when he was promoted to Captain, Company D on 28 June.

He was in action with his Company at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and later remembered, in particular:

Between these hostile lines lay hundreds of dead and dying of both sides, fighting being so continuous as to prevent proper attention to them. I do not now [1910] recall the names of any of these, except that of a younger brother, the late Judge M. B. Wood, whose wound was severe, and naturally I was impressed.

He was captured at Gettysburg, PA on 3 July 1863 and held briefly at Fort Delaware, but was exchanged on 9 July. He was captured again, at Spotsylvania Court House, VA on 12 May 1864. He was at Point Lookout, MD, then transferred to Fort Delaware on 25 June 1864. He was released 16 June 1865 after taking the oath of allegiance.

He had studied the law while a prisoner and was admitted to the bar in 1867 and practiced in Bristol, VA. He went to Washington, DC in 1901 and to New York City in 1909, where he was in the real estate business.

His service from Rankin1 via the Historical Data Systems database. Details from his own The War; "Stonewall" Jackson, His Campaigns, and Battles, the Regiment as I Saw Them (1910), from his roster record from the VMI Archives, and from Omar Addington's Five Confederates From Pleasant Hill (1979) online from the Scott County Historical Society. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Laura Lucrecia James (1844-1891) in 1869 and they had 6 children. He married the widow Virginia Holmes in Bristol before 1901, and their only child died as an infant.

His "War" memoir in online from Project Gutenberg and from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

02/22/1842; near Estillville (now Gate City), VA

11/12/1917; New York City, NY; burial in East View Cemetery, Bristol City, VA