Laban Radcliff Exline

In 1860 he was a 20 year old farm worker in Monongalia County, VA. He enlisted as 3rd Corporal of Company A, 31st Virginia Infantry on 17 May 1861 at Fairmont. He was slightly wounded on the Greenbrier River, VA on 3 October 1861 and was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant on 1 May 1862. He was First Lieutenant by July.

He was wounded by a gunshot to his left arm in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was promoted to Captain on 6 December 1862 (to date from 13 November) but was still absent from his Company due to his Sharpsburg wound when he was detailed to arrest deserters and to recruiting duty in February 1863. He resigned his commission on 13 July 1863 by which time his arm had been amputated due to wounds.

He was arrested/captured by Union militia in Barbour County, VA (WV) on 8 November 1864 and sent to Camp Chase, OH from the Federal prison at Wheeling, WV on 18 November. He was paroled at Camp Chase on 17 February 1865 for exchange, but escaped en route to Point Lookout, MD that month. He was paroled at Staunton, VA on 19 May 1865.

He was a founding stockholder of the Cape Fear (NC) Iron and Steel Company at its incorporation in 1872. In 1880 he was the Register Of Deeds at New Hope in Chatham County, NC. By 1893 and to at least 1901 he was a Federal employee in the Office of the Secretary of the Interior in Washington, DC.

His service from Ashcraft1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 via fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860 and 1880, the Public Laws of the State of North Carolina (1872), and the Official Register of the United States (1893, 1901). He's often seen as Rad or Radcliff Exline. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Thanks to Ralph Parmenter Bennett for the pointer to Lieutenant Exline.

He married Margaret A. "Maggie" Poe (1856-1940) in October 1873 in Cumberland County, NC and they had a daughter Martha (1874-1954).

08/24/1840; Monongalia County, VA

08/04/1905; burial in Pittsboro Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Pittsboro, NC