Southampton County-Petersburg City Virginia USGenWeb Archives Obituaries.....Mahone, Gen. William, 1895 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/vafiles.htm ************************************************ GEN. WILLIAM MAHONE DYING The Well-Known Virginia Politician Passing Away in Washington. SKETCH OF HIS EVENTFUL CAREER. At One Time He Held the Political Destinies of the Old Dominion in the Hollow of His Hand - The Rise and Fall of the Famous Boss - A Gallant Soldier. WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 5. - Special. - General Mahone's condition to-night remains practically unchanged, save for the general sinking that is inevitable. His family still remain at his bedside, and hope for the best, even in the face of certain death within a short time. The General is conscious, except during the time passed under the influence of opiates. He is able to recognize his family during his waking moments, and was able to-day to utter a few words to Butler Mahone, who was at the bedside. These are not considered signs of recovery, however, as it is known that the congestion of the brain that has resulted from the bursting of one of the small veins of the head, must result fatally. At no time since the first stroke has the General been in condition to arrange his worldly affairs, and it is now certain that he will pass away without making any further arrangements than are made in his will, if such a document exists. RAPIDLY SINKING. WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct 5. - After a consultation at 11 o'clock the physician in attendance upon General William Mahone expressed the opinion that he could live but a few hours, and would probably die before morning. He is sinking rapidly from exhaustion, and his pulse is almost imperceptible. BELIEVED TO BE DYING. WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 6. - Special.-Ex-Senator Mahone has been steadily sinking to-night, and at this hour (2:20 A.M.) is believed to be dying. [engraving, captioned "GENERAL WILLIAM MAHONE."] SKETCH OF HIS CAREER. William Mahone, Adjutant-General of the Army of Northern Virginia is in two months of his seventieth year, having been born at Monroe, in Southampton county, Va., December 1, 1826. Little is known of his boyhood, except that, it is said, he was very fond of horses, and while yet young rode in the informal races of the neighborhood. His public carrer commenced when he entered the Virginia Military Institute as a State cadet at the age of seventeen, and graduated from that school in 1847. Then commenced his restless life, which to the end was one of ambition, struggle, and strife, for place and power. For two years after his graduation he taught school, and then took up the duties of his profession as civil engineer, for which his education at the Virginia Military Institute, no less than his own talents, peculiar fitted him. His first work was an assistant in the survey of the Orange and Alexandria railroad, from Alexandria to Lynchburg. Subsequently and successively, he became the chief engineer of the Fredericksburg and Orange plank road, and chief engineer of the Norfolk and Petersburg railroad. Upon the completion of this road he was made its president, and occupied that position at the opening of the war between the States. HIS WAR RECORD. Immediately on the secession of Virginia, Mahone was appointed by the "Virginia Council" chief quartermaster of the Virginia forces. This position he held for about ten days, when he resigned, and was appointed lieutenant- colonel of infantry, and assigned to the command of the post at Burwell's Bay, but before he accepted this position, he was made colonel of the Sixth Virginia Infantry. Some months later, Colonel Mahone was appointed Brigadier-General, receiving his commission from the Confederate States Government, and was placed in command of the troops of the Norfolk district of the Department of Norfolk, and so continued until the evacuation of the Department, in May, 1862. From 1862 to 1864, General Mahone continued in command of what was known as Mahone's Brigade, of which the Sixth, Twelfth and Forty-first Virginia regiments were always members, and which up to some time in 1862 embraced also the Third Alabama Regiment, and later, after the Alabama regiment, was transferred to another brigade, the Sixty-first Virginia Regiment was added in its place. General Mahone, having received a disabling wound in the battle of Second Manassas, was not with his command again until just before the battle of Fredericksburg. In May, 1863, General Mahone was elected a member of the State Senate, but did not take his seat in this body until January, 1864, and then only for a few days. When General Longstreet was wounded in the battle of the Wilderness, on the 6th of May, 1864, General R.H. Anderson was placed in command of his corps, and General Mahone in command of Anderson's Division, which was composed of the five following brigades: Mahone's (Virginia), Wright's (Georgia), Hanes' (Mississippi), Saunders' (Alabama), and Perry's (Florida). This division General Mahone continued to command until the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, securing a few days after the battle of the Crater his commission as major-general, dating from that famous engagement (July 30, 1864). After the battle of the Wilderness he was tendered the appointment of major-general, with temporary rank, but this he respectfully declined. When the war closed General Mahone's many brilliant achievements as a military commander had won him great fame. He had to the credit of his reputation as a fighter, the battle of the Crater, the battle of Johnson's Farm on the 22d of June, 1864, and the dash upon the enemy's rear at Aiken's Farm on the evening of August 19, 1864, actions in which were captured an aggregate of over 6,000 prisoners, the Federal forces having been struck felling blows in each battle. At Appomattox Court House, his and Field's division were the only two organized divisions in the Confederate army. During the winter of 1864-65 the people of Petersburg, in recognition of his military services, presented him with a sword. A RAILROAD ORGANIZER The war over, General Mahone again turned his attention to the business of railroading. He was elected president of the Southside railroads, running from Petersburg to Lynchburg, and also of the Virginia and Tennessee railroad, running from Lynchburg to Bristol, and soon succeeded in consolidating these two railroads from the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad (of which he had been president for several years), and organizing the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio railroad. He became the president of the consolidated road, which office he held until the road was sold in 1881. Although the road was under financial difficulties from the beginning, its management created a new era in railroading in the South, and at the time of its sale and reorganization into the Norfolk and Western, was celebrated for its elegant road bed and excellent equipment. All during these years General Mahone was potential in the shaping of public affairs, and quietly, though powerfully, used the influences given by the power invested in him as head of their greatest railroad corporation in the South. AS A POLITICIAN The ambition and spirit of leadership which had marked his previous career, at this time led General Mahone into the arena of politics, and from that date he was the disturbing element, disrupting factor in all the political movements of the old Commonwealth. Virginia was at that time in an exceptionally interesting condition, being laden with an enormous debt that soon became the issue of vital importance between the political parties. So great was the burden that there was formed a faction of the Democrats who styled themselves readjusters, favoring adjudication of the State debt on a basis that meant partial repudiation. General William Mahone was the leader of this faction. By a most adroit and shrewd tact a fusion was formed with the Republican party, which alone was not strong enough to carry an election. His record during the war had endeared him to the mass of the people of the State, and many of them, particularly in the southwest counties, followed him into the Republican ranks. Under these circumstances the Readjuster-Republican combination was successful. In 1879 the State was carried by the Republican fusion, electing not only Governor Cameron and the entire State ticket, but the legislature, which was charged with the election of a United States Senator. General Mahone, who had led the negroes, Republicans, and disaffected Democrats against the best elements of the State to encompass this end, was naturally the choice that body, and he was elected to the United States Senate. This change to the Republicans, when a single vote was the deciding weight in a body equally divided, is too well known in history to be dwelt upon. The federal patronage of the State was placed at his disposal, and no man ever used it more effectively. General Mahone held full sway until in 1889, when he was the Republican nominee for Governor, and was defeated by Hon. P.W. McKinney. From that time the political power of General Mahone commenced to wane, and the Democrats again gained control of the State. No man was more cordially hated and none seemed to care less the creator of the strife. Although his power was gone, he was ever on the alert for some opportunity to foist himself again into political prominence, and the formation of the "Honest Elections Party" is credited mainly to his genius and loses much of its force because it is connected with a name whose past political methods did not commend it to those with the purpose in view indicated in the name adopted. General Mahone lived in a handsome house in Petersburg, but most of his political conferences were held at Chamberlain's, in Washington, where he was overtaken by the stroke of paralysis which was the beginning of the end. _____________ A RICH MAN. Says a Washington correspondent: "While in the Senate General Mahone was reputed to be a rich man, but of late years his fortune has been frittered away in bad speculations and law suits, until his friends have begun to regard him as being in very straightened circumstances. During the last two Congresses Mahone, with the aid of Don Cameron and other influential friends in Congress, made a desperate effort to get an appropriation for the purchase of his property in the hope of saving himself from bankruptcy. A determined fight was made by the opposition, composed chiefly of the owners of other building sites, and the closing weeks of both sessions of the fight, over "the Mahone site," in spite of the fact that the committees of both the Senate and House and and a large majority of Representatives were strongly opposed to the Mahone site, an amendment was added to the Sundry Civil Appropriation bill last session providing for its purchase. This bill was one of the last to be put through the hopper in the closing hours, and during the various roll-calls that were taken in the Senate on the proposition, General Mahone and his son stood in the lobby, with tally sheets in their hands, keeping tab on their friends and their enemies in full view of the crowd of spectators, who thronged the marble room and the corridors, and where even the Senators could see them through the glass doors of the Senate chamber. The Mahone Senators were loyal, but in the dead of the night, in the privacy of the conference room, the amendment was stricken out under the threat of the House conferees that if it was not done the entire bill would be defeated. When the news reached the outside corridors, the Senator and his son, who had hardly taken time to sleep or eat for the past two days, got into their rickety hack, and without a word of complaint, went back to Chamberlin's, [sic; Chamberlain's] game to the last. General Mahone, though slight of stature, has been noted for his fine health and great endurance. He is now within two months of his seventieth year, but does not look his age by a dozen or a score of years. For a long time he has been one of the picturesque figures of the capital. His favorite resort has always been Chamberlain's Hotel, where he could be found almost every evening, the center of a group of brilliant and distiguished men. He had a great store of anecdotes, and about all his stories there was a quaintness quite his own. His personal apearance was striking. A mere midget of a body was surmounted by a head large enough for a giant, its size being emphasized by a shaggy growth of hair and a patriarchal beard. In his attire he was a trifle eccentric, following always the style of the Virginia planter of fifty years ago, with frilled shirts and cuffs, fine leather boots on his very small feet, and a large gray slouch hat on his head. Since leaving the Senate in 1887, General Mahone has spent much of his time in Washington where many prominent men were glad to maintain friendship with him. Among those was Senator Vest, of Missouri, and Matt Quay and Don Cameron, of Pennsylvania. Ex-Senator Platt, of New York; General Clarkson, of Iowa, and many prominent Republicans were also among his admirers. The late Senator Plumb, of Kansas, and ex-Senator Farwell, of Illinois, as well as the late Senator Hearst, of California, were among General Mahone's warmest friends. Though one of the heroes of the Confederacy and certainly worthy to be ranked among the best of their fighters, Southern men have had no place in their hearts for him since he entered the Senate in 1881, and cast his lot with the Republicans, breaking the tie vote in that body, and enabling the Republicans to organize the committees. This was the crisis in Mahone's life. The decision to go with the Republican party on that occasion cost him his career as a public man, his social position in Virginia and ultimately his fortune. It is unwritten history that when General Mahone came to the Senate and held the balance of power in his hands prominent Democrats of his own State and of the South pleaded with him to stand by the party with which he had affiliated until he made his famous and successful readjuster campaign. They promised him he should be a Senator from Virginia as long as he lived, and no doubt that if General Mahone had chosen to remain in the Democratic party this promise would have been fulfilled to the letter. Though President Garfield sent flowers to adorn Mahone's desk when he cast his lot with the Republicans, the Virginian sided with Conklin and Platt in the famous controversy with Garfield and the patronage of the State of Virginia was taken out of his hands to punish him. When Arthur became President, Mahone was treated much better, but it was too late, and his power in Virginia had been broken. TWO PICTURES. Megargee, in the Philadelphia Times, draws two pictures of Mahone as follows: "Whenever his name is mentioned Mahone appears before my mental vision in two forms; the one presenting him in a bed in the Continental Hotel in this city, and the other, standing for the second time in his life on the field of Gettysburg, where he had seen 45,000 of his men killed, wounded, or counted among the missing. He was in Philadelphia in 1882, and one night news came to this city of a duel between two well-known Virginians, who had esorted to the arbitrament of the code of honor, to settle a dispute which had arisen out of the rasping condition of affairs political in Virginia, consequent upon the formation of the Readjuster party, which one year previously had sent Mahone to the United States Senate, and which had as its temporary basis of popularity a partial repudiation of the State debt under the nominal guise of readjustment. I carried the news to Mahone at the Continental Hotel. He was abed. When I was ushered into his room the sight that met my eye was startling. The apartment was brilliantly lighted. The bed coverings were apparently undisturbed, but upon the pillow was what appeared to be the head of a living man, with piercing eyes, a mass of tangled hair, a very long, straggling beard, but no body. It was nerve-shaking. But this was Senator William Mahone; not exactly all of him, but his body was so small and attenuated that it gave the bed coverings no elevation, and the upper sheet, being drawn up to his chin and under his beard, gave the startling impression of a living but bodiless head resting upon the pillow. Information of the duel caused his eyes to gleam still more brightly and fiercely, but the tone in which he discussed the affair was cold and careless. The mere question of whether either man was mortally wounded did not appear to specially interest him, his one concern apparently being that the public at large should know that the cause of the Readjuster was just. When I next saw Mahone, of Virginia - it was April, 1893 - he stood with General James Longstreet, Lee's chief-of-staff; General E.P. Alexander, Longstreet's chief of artillery, and who conducted from the Confederate side the famous artillery duel, which distinguished the third day's fight at Gettysburg; General O.O. Howard, who commanded the Union forces during the first day's battle; General Daniel E. Sickles, who lost a leg upon that memorable occasion; General David McMurtrie Gregg, who led the 30,000 cavalrymen who met and overthrew a similar force of horsemen, who sprang to the charge at the command of the famous Jeb Stuart, and many other prominent opponents in the civil conflict on the scene of that fratricidal fray, which handed the names of Hancock, Meade, and Reynolds down to enduring fame, and placed those of the members of the Pennsylania Reservers on the world's roll of heroes. Thirty years had elapsed since that day of blood, and during the intervening time, Mahone had not once placed his foot upon the historic spot. In the Gettysburg fight he commanded a brigade, although he was never actively engaged in the contest, his men being held in reserve, but so close to the fighting line that a number of them were killed even while in a state of passiveness. As he stood among the group of famous warriors two years ago, little more than half as high as some of them, he presented a most striking aspect. I recall him now with baggy trousers, a baggy coat, from the ends of whose sleeves delicate ruffles of the finest linen peeped forth; patent leather boots with the high heels of a woman's French shoe that any belle might envy; long white hair, surmounted by a dingy white hat of the pattern worn by brigadier-generals; fierce eyes blazing from a pallid face, and beneath a long gray beard reaching almost to his waist. The talk was of the tragic occurences of thirty years before. Alexander was telling of Pickett's disastrous charge, and was pointing out to Longstreet the spot where he stood when he sadly bowed his head in assenting silence to the young Virginian's inquiry as to whether he should move forward to the attack which after events demonstrated was a march of death for the flower of Southern chivalry, when Mahone excitedly interrupted him, saying: "I was further out on the left. I was held in reserve to support Pickett, and had received the order to march, and had just given the command when an aide galloped up shouting 'Halt, halt!' Lee saw the hopelessness of the contest, and he determined to sacrifice no more lives uselessly." General Mahone leaves surviving him a widow, Mrs. Philis [sic; Otelia] Mahone (who was a daughter of Dr. Butler, of Southampton county, and one of the most prominent citizens of eastern Virginia in his day), two sons, Messrs. R. Butler and Welha [sic; William] Mahone, and a daughter, Mrs. Ophelia [sic; Otelia] B. McGill, the wife of W.L. McGill, Esq., of this city. __________________ ****************************************************************************** DEATH OF GEN. MAHONE He Passed Quietly Away Yesterday In Washington City. HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN AT HIS BEDSIDE Sketch of His Very Eventful Career - Railroad Magnate, Soldier, Politician and Statesman - His Funeral Will Take Place at Petersburg This Afternoon. Washington, D. C., Oct. 8. - General William Mahone died at Chamberlaine's Hotel at 1 o'clock this afternoon, from the effects of the paralytic stroke sustained last Monday, September 30th. He had been totally unconscious for more that forty-eight hours previous to death, and passed away seemingly without pain. Mrs. Mahone, Butler and William Mahone, his sons, Mrs. O.M. McGill, his daughter; L.L. Manry, of Southampton county, Va., a nephew, and Captain Rogers, Secretary of the Virginia State Republican Committee, and former Secretary to General Mahone, were at his bedside when the end came. Arrangements for the funeral were made soon after General Mahone died. The remains will be taken to Petersburg, Va., by the train leaving Washington at 4:30 to-morrow morning. Services will be held at 5 o'clock to-morrow evening at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Petersburg, and the body will then be taken to the place of interment. The honorary pall-bearers will be soldiers who served in that organization. General Mahone was paying one of his frequent visits to Washington, when he was paralyzed last Monday. He was partly conscious and able to take nourishment until Sunday morning last. From that time until his death he did not open his eyes and was unable to take any nourishment. The following officers of General Mahone's old brigade and members of General A.P. Hill Camp, Confederate Veterans, all of Petersburg, will be the honorary pall-bearers: Major J. Arthur Johnston, Judge D.A. Hinton, General Stith Bolling, Captain E.A. Goodwyn, Captain John R. Patterson, Captain Asa Rogers, Colonel E.M. Field and R.T. Harrington. The active pall-bearers will be the following privates who served under General Mahone: George S. Bernard, J.E. Spottswood, J.R. Turner, R.I. Watson, T.S. Beckwith, J.E. Whitehorn, Alexander Wilson and R.R. Gee. Gen. Mahone was stricken with paralysis some time between midnight Sunday, September 29th, and morning, September 30th. He was found in his room Monday morning by his son, Butler Mahone, who called according to his custom, to see his father. At the moment it was thought nothing serious had occurred, but a little later it was found that Gen. Mahone was paralyzed on his right side and could not talk. Dr. Wales and Dr. R. W. Baker were summoned and pronounced it paralysis. His wife and family were summoned to his side, and the best possible care taken of the patient. He did not suffer any pain, and made his wants known by nodding his head in answer to anxious questions put to him. The next morning Gen. Mahone's condition showed slight improvement. He partially regained the use of his tongue and managed to articulate a few words. He could also use his right arm and shook hands with his son, William, who arrived that morning. The doctors did not hold out any encouragement of his complete recovery, however, for the paralysis was too extensive. They thought he might partially rally but that he would never be well. Their prophesy received early fulfillment. Gen. Mahone began to sink rapidly within twenty-four hours and continued to grow worse. Last Sunday morning he lapsed into unconsciousness and is was no longer possible to administer nourishments. He continued to fail without pause until death came. SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. This very excellent sketch of the career of General Mahone appeared in the Richmond Times of Sunday. From the same it is learned that William Mahone was born at Monroe, Southampton county, Va., December 1, 1826. He had almost completed sixty-nine years of an eventful career: GENERAL WILLIAM MAHONE. Little is known of his boyhood, except that, it is said, he was very fond of horses, and while yet young rode in the informal races of the neighborhood. His public career commenced when he entered the Virginia Military Institute as a State cadet at the age of 17, and graduated from that school in 1847. Then commenced his restless life, which to the end was one of ambition, struggle, and strife, for place and power. For two years after his graduation he taught school, and then took up the duties of his profession as civil engineer, for which his education at the Virginia Military Institute, no less than his own talents, peculiar fitted him. His first work was an assistant in the survey of the Orange and Alexandria railroad, from Alexandria to Lynchburg. Subsequently and successively, he became the chief engineer of the Fredericksburg and Orange Plank road, and chief engineer of the Norfolk and Petersburg railroad. Upon the completion of this road he was made its president, and occupied that position at the opening of the war between the States. HIS WAR RECORD. Immediately on the secession of Virginia, Mahone was appointed by the "Virginia Council" chief quartermaster of the Virginia forces. This position he held for about ten days, when he resigned, and was appointed lieutenant colonel of infantry, and assigned to the command of the post at Burwell's Bay, but before he accepted this position, he was made colonel of the Sixth Virginia Infantry. Some months later Colonel Mahone was appointed Brigadier-General, receiving his commission from the Confederate States Government, and was placed in command of the troops of the Norfolk district of the Department of Norfolk, and so continued until the evacuation of the Department, in May, 1862. From 1861 to 1864, General Mahone continued in command of what was known as Mahone's Brigade, of which the Sixth, Twelfth and Forty-first Virginia regiments were always members, and which up to some time in 1862 embraced also the Third Alabama Regiment, and later, after the Alabama Regiment, was transferred to another brigade, the Sixty-first Virginia Regiment was added in its place. General Mahone, having received a disabling wound in the battle of Second Manassas, was not with his command again until just before the battle of Fredericksburg. In May, 1863, General Mahone was elected a member of the State Senate, but did not take his seat in this body until January, 1864, and then only a few days. When General Longstreet was wounded in the battle of the Wilderness, on the 6th of May, 1864, General R.H. Anderson was placed in command of the corps, and General Mahone in command of Anderson's Division, which was composed of the five following brigades: Mahone's (Virginia), Wright's (Georgia), Hanes' (Mississippi), Saunders' (Alabama), and Perry's (Florida). This division General Mahone continued to command until the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, securing a few days after the battle of the Crater his commission as major-general, dating from that famous engagement (July 30, 1864). After the battle of the Wilderness he was tendered the appointment of major-general, with temporary rank, but this he respectfully declined. When the war closed General Mahone's many brilliant achievements as a military commander had won him great fame. He had to the credit of his reputation as a fighter the battle of the Crater, the battle of Johnson's Farm on the 22d of June, 1864, and the dash upon the enemy's rear at Aiken's Farm on the evening of August 19, 1864, actions in which were captured an aggregate of over 6,000 prisoners, the Federal forces having been struck felling blows in each battle. At Appomattox Courthouse his and Field's division were the only two organized divisions in Confederate army. During the winter of 1864-65 the people of Petersburg, in recognition of nis military services, presented him with a sword. A RAILROAD ORGANIZER The war over, General Mahone again turned his attention to the business of railroading. He was elected president of the Southside railroads, running from Petersburg to Lynchburg, and also of the Virginia and Tennessee railroad, running from Lynchburg to Bristol, and soon succeeded in consolidating these two railroads from the Norfolk and Petersburg railroad (of which he had been president for several years), and organizing the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio railroad. He became the president of the consolidated road, which office he held until the road was sold in 1881. Although the road was under financial difficulties from the beginning, its management created a new era in railroading in the South, and at the time of its sale and reorganization into the Norfolk and Western, was celebrated for its elegant road-bed and excellent equipment. All during these years General Mahone was potential in the shaping of public affairs, and quietly, though powerfully, used the influences given by the power invested in him as head of their greatest railroad corporation in the South. AS A POLITICIAN The ambition and spirit of leadership which had marked his previous career at this time led Geeral Mahone into the arena of politics, and from that date he was the disturbing element, disrupting factor in all the political movements of the old Commonwealth. Virginia was at that time in an exceptionally interesting condition, being laden with an enormous debt that soon became the issue of vital importance between the political parties. So great was the burden that there was formed a faction of the Democrats who styled themselves Readjusters, favoring adjudication of the State debt on a basis that meant partial repudiation. General William Mahone was the leader of this faction. By a most adroit and shrewd tact a fusion was formed with the Republican party, which alone was not strong enough to carry an election. His record during the war had endeared him to the mass of the people of the State, and many of them, particularly in the Southwest counties, followed him into the Republican ranks. Under these circumstances the Readjuster-Republican combination was successful. In 1879 the State was carried by the Republican fusion, electing not only Governor Cameron and the entire State ticket, but the legislature, which was charged with the election of a United States Senator. General Mahone, who had led the negroes, Republicans, and disaffected Democrats against the best elements of the state to encompass this end, was naturally the choice that body, and and he was elected to the United States Senate. This change to the Republicans, when a single vote was the deciding weight in a body equally divided, is too well known in history to be dwelt upon. The Federal patronage of the State was placed at his disposal, and no man ever used it more effectively. General Mahone held full sway until in 1889, when he was the Republican nominee for Governor and was defeated by Hon. P.W. McKinney. From that time the political power of General Mahone commenced to wane, and the Democrats again gained control of the State. No man was more cordially hated and none seemed to care less the creator of the strife. Although his power was gone, he was ever on the alert for some opportunity to foist himself again into political prominence, and the formation of the "Honest Elections Party" is credited mainly to his genius, and loses much of its force because it is connected with a name whose past political methods did not commend it to those with the purpose in view indicated in the name adopted. General Mahone lived in a handsome house in Petersburg, but most of his political conferences were held at Chamberlain's, in Washington, where he was overtaken by the stroke of paralysis which was the beginning of the end. _____________ THE NEWS IN NORFOLK _____________ Pickett-Buchanan Camp Sympathizes With Mrs. Mahone. The news of General Mahone's death was received with sadness by a large number of former members of Mahone's Brigade, residing in this city. Commander Walter A. Edwards, of Pickett-Buchanan Camp, C.V., sent the following telegram to his wife immediately after the receipt of the dispatch announcing the death of the gallant ex-Confederate. Norfolk. Va., Oct. 8, 1895. Mrs. Wm. Mahone. Washington, D.C: Pickett-Buchanan Camp, Confeder- ate Veterans, of Norfolk, extends its sympathy to you in your deep afflic- tion. WALTER A. EDWARDS, Commander; T. H. JACKSON, Adjutant. The flag on The Virginian Building was placed at half mast in respect to the memory of the dead leader, and universal expressions of regret were heard. [...] LATEST SUFFOLK LOCAL. [...] HIS COMRADE NOTIFIED. - Colonel T.W. Smith, a former comrade in arms with General William Mahone, yesterday afternoon received a telegraph from Washington announcing the latter's death. It is needless to say that there were expressions of grief. William MAHONE, former US Senator, Confederate Major-General, former R.R. engineer, president & magnate, b. 1 Dec 1826, Monroe, Southampton Co., d. 8 Oct 1895, Washington, DC, entombed in Blandford Cemetery*, Petersburg, "The Times" (Richmond, VA), Sun., October 06, 1895, p. 1 & 5; "The Norfolk Virginian," Vol. L, No. 118, Wed., Oct. 9, 1895, p. 1 & 3 *Find-a-Grave Mem. #8339 gives d. 8 Sep 1895. *His parents are buried in the MAHONE-MANRY family cemetery, just off Linden St., Courtland, Southampton County Historical Society {SCHS} Cemetery Project, Miscellaneous Cemeteries, Vol. 2 (II-27): http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/cemeteries/miscvol2.txt The death notices ("Daily Dispatch" & "Alexandria Gazette," Sep. 7, 1868) of his mother and his infant child are posted at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/obits/m500m1ob.txt His father moved from Monroe to Jerusalem (now Courtland) in the 1840's, buying an extant tavern/hotel. Mahone's Tavern & Museum, Inc. operates the site, and has considerable information on the site & the general. https://www.mahonestavern.org/ Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by File Manager Matt Harris (zoobug64@aol.com). file at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/obits/m500w1ob.txt