Greenbrier County, West Virginia Biography of Joseph Coleman ALDERSON ************************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: Material may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material, AND permission is obtained from the contributor of the file. These pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for non-commercial purposes, MUST obtain the written consent of the contributor. Submitted by Valerie Crook, , April 1999 ************************************************************************** Confederate Military History, Extended Edition, Vol. III, West Virginia, by. Col. Robert White et al, copyright 1899 by Confederate Publishing Company, reprinted 1987 by Broadfoot Publishing Company, Wilmington, NC. pg. 139-141 Lieutenant Joseph Coleman ALDERSON, of Wheeling, W. Va., distinguished among the Confederate soldiers of Greenbrier county for faithful and devoted service, was born at Locust Grove, Amherst county, Va., October 19, 1839, the home of his maternal grandfather, John Cole- man. His father, Rev. L. A. Alderson, a few years later removed to the old stone mansion opposite the town of Alderson, on the Greenbrier river, where young Alderson was reared. He was educated at the Lewisburg acad- emy and Alleghany college, at Blue Sulphur Springs, an institution which was destroyed by the war. In his senior year at this college he enlisted on April 15, 1861, in the Greenbrier cavalry, a company which served in the West Virginia campaign of 1861 as bodyguard for General Garnett until his death, and afterward as body- guard to Gen. R. E. Lee, and as his couriers until he left that department. In December following the company was disbanded. Alderson was a young man of remark- able physical development and a famous athlete, qualities which, added to great personal daring, made him a natural leader among his fellows. He devoted his talents to the Confederate cause by raising a new cavalry company, of which he was elected second lieutenant. This company was assigned to the Fourteenth cavalry regiment, and Lieutenant Alderson a few months later organized an- other company, of which he was made first lieutenant, declining, as in the previous instance, the rank of captain. This became Company A, of the Thirty-sixth Virginia battalion of cavalry, distinguished in the commands of General Jenkins and W. E. Jones. Lieutenant Alderson commanded this company from June 12, 1863, to the close of the war, and was frequently in command of the battalion, acting as major. During his four years' serv- ice he never had but eight days' leave of absence from his command. He commanded his company at the fight at Buchanan, Upshur county, was in the fights at Weston, W. Va.; Ravenswood and Racine, on the Ohio river; Charleston and Buffalo, W. Va., and in the winter of 1862 was sent on detailed service to Roanoke, Va. Returning in the early summer of 1863, he passed through Lexington, Va., on the day of the interment of the body of Stonewall Jackson, and his company fired the military salute over the dead hero's grave. He next fought at Opequon, captured and brought in eight Yankees at North Mountain Gap, and then participating in the Penn- sylvania campaign skirmished every day and night as far as Carlisle, Pa., whence he was sent with an escort of five men to carry important dispatches to General Early, near York, seventy miles away, through the enemy's country, one of his most daring exploits. He was with his command at Gettysburg, carried the first order on the first day from General Ewell to General Rhodes, and at night gave General Lee the first news of the Federal reinforcements. In the cavalry fight which followed from Hagerstown to Williamsport he was wounded by a fragment of shell and disabled two months. In 1864 he was in battle at Jonesville, W. Va. ; Cumberland Gap, Rogersville, Tenn.; Waynesboro, Va., and Pettit's Mill. In the last encounter he was captured by the enemy. His conduct while a prisoner strikingly displayed his unconquerable spirit. He had hardly well started on the road north before he secured the escape of twenty-seven of his Confederate comrades, and while confined at Camp Chase, Ohio, he made three ineffectual attempts to escape by tunneling. He refused alike to take the oath or to give his parole on condition of remaining North. Fi- nally,in February, 1865, he was sent to Fort McHenry and Point Lookout, and in the following month was exchanged at City Point. While on his way to rejoin the army he was informed of the end of the war. He took part, in all, in over two hundred engagements, and his service was frequently of the most arduous character, as in the winter of 1863-64, when he was in daily fighting, and in the Ten- nessee campaign, under General Jones, when he was on the march every night. Going west in 1865 he had charge of the middle division of the Butterfield overland express through the Indian country until it was broken up by the red men, when he joined his father and farmed near Atchison, Kan. Since 1869 he has resided at Wheeling, and has conducted an extensive insurance busi- ness and dealt largely in coal and timber lands. He has declined political advancement, but served as a West Vir- ginia commissioner at the Ohio Valley centennial at Cin- cinnati in 1888 and at the Washington centennial in New York in 1889. He married Miss Mary, daughter of ex-Gov. Samuel Price, of Virginia.