Accomack County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Colonna, Benjamin Azariah 1843 - 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Alice Warner http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00015.html#0003503 August 1, 2008, 11:25 pm

Author: John Howard Brown

COLONNA, Benjamin Azariah, geodetician and civil engineer, was born in Accomack
county, Va., Oct. 17, 1843; son of John Wilkins and Margaret (Jones) Colonna;
grandson of Benjamin Colonna; and a descendant of Owen Colonna, who emigrated
from England and settled in Accomack on the eastern shore of Virginia about
1697, where the male members of the family were prominent as soldiers taking
part in the Revolutionary war, the war of 1812 and the civil war. He was a
student at the Virginia military institute and with his fellow students entered
the service of his state Aug. 3, 1860, and was graduated in 1864, serving at the
time in the Confederate army as cadet captain, Company D, corps of cadets, which
he commanded at the battle of Newmarket, Va. He attained the rank of captain in
the Confederate army and surrendered with Johnston's army at Greensboro, N.C.,
April 26, 1865. He returned to his home in Accomack county where he engaged in
teaching, surveying and farming until July 1870 when he attached himself to the
U.S. coast survey under Gen. R. D. Cutts. He was employed on various duties,
passed through several grades in the service, and on July 24, 1885, was assigned
to duty as assistant in charge of office and topography in the U.S. coast and
geodetic survey at Washington, D.C. In March 1895, he resigned from the coast
and geodetic survey and at once began the construction of a large marine railway
at Norfolk, Va. This led to his taking up the study of steel floating dry docks
of the latest improved construction and to his advocating them for adoption in
the United States for docking ships of the merchant marine and of the navy. Such
a dock was provided for in the naval appropriation bill for 1899.

Additional Comments:
Lamb's Biographical Dictionary of the United States Vol. II., 1900.

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