George Wise

In 1860 he was a 20 year old clerk in his father's coal business, living with his parents and 9 siblings in Alexandria, VA. He enlisted as a Corporal in Company H, 17th Virginia Infantry on 17 April 1861 in Alexandria, VA. He was promoted to 4th Sergeant by June 1862 and to 2nd Sergeant by August.

He was serving as acting regimental Ordnance Sergeant in Maryland in September 1862.

He was formally appointed Ordnance Sergeant in November 1862. He was assigned as Sergeant to Company G, 1st Confederate Engineer Troops, CSA on 19 November 1863 and was surrendered and paroled with them at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865 and took an oath of allegiance in Alexandria, VA on 10 May 1865.

Back in Alexandria, he worked for the Orange & Alexandria Railroad until 1867, then went into the life insurance business, as Wise & Company, Insurance Agents, which he operated for the rest of his life. He was still in Alexandria in 1880, and from 1900 to at least 1910 was living in the Falls Church district of Fairfax County, VA. In 1920 his address was again in Alexandria and he was still working as an insurance agent, then 79 years old.

Basic service from his own History,1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, a bio sketch in Eminent and Representative Men of Virginia and the District of Columbia in the Nineteenth Century (1893), the Alexandria Gazette of 6 November 1890, and the US Census of 1860-1920. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He also wrote Campaigns and Battles of the Army of Northern Virginia (1916), which is the source of his picture, from a wartime photograph.

His diary is in the William Perkins Library, Duke University.

He married Ida Virginia Smoot (1843-1927) in October 1868 and they had 3 children.

The family home he lived in in 1860 was probably the mansion known as "Araby" on Braddock Road near (modern day) Stadium Drive [GoogleMap], which was probably destroyed during the Civil War. George may have had it rebuilt across the street, a place called "Monokin" but probably known as Araby by 1902, when his daughter Florence was married there. Much more on this and nearby properties is in the City of Alexandria's 1992 Historic Preservation Plan. [PDF]

05/18/1840; Alexandria, VA

01/31/1923; burial in Presbyterian Cemetery, Alexandria, VA