| From the Charleston News & Courier |
| |
| December 19, 1903 |
| |
| Mr Edgar Laroche Heriot |
| Death of the Oldest Graduate of the South Carolina
Military Academy |
| |
| To the Editor of The News and Courier: |
| When the Association of Graduates and
Ex-Cadets of the South Carolina Military Academy met in their annual
reunion at the Citadel, on Wednesday, December 9, last, it was not
known that the oldest graduate had passed away on the coast of the
Pacific, just three days before. |
| Such is the fact. Col. Edgar LaRouche
Heriot died in San Francisco, December 6 last, in the 79th year of his
age. |
| He was the youngest son of Robert and
Maria Heriot of Georgetown, S. C. He was a graduate with second honor
of the class of 1847. |
| These were his fellow graduates: Johnson
Hagood, S. B. Jones, J. P. Southern. |
| He was the most distinguished civil
engineer that the Citadel has sent out in all its history. Col. Heriot
began his career as a civil engineer in the engineer corps of the
Columbia and Greenville Railroad. This service was to embrace a period
of forty years in a field extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
in peach and in war. |
| When the war came, in 1861, he was in
Louisiana. Upon the secession of the State he raised a company of
infantry, tendered his services to Governor Moore. It was accepted,
and he received his commission as captain and the company was mustered
into service. He was, however, soon detached and ordered to report to
Gen. Lovell, at New Orleans, for duty in the engineer corps, in which
service he remained during the war of secession. He added to his
laurels as a civil engineer the laurels of a brilliant military
engineer. He served mainly in the Trans-Mississippi department and
during the last year of the war he became military superintendent of
all the railroads in the Confederacy west of the Mississippi. |
| After the war he was penniless, but he
soon regained his work as a civil engineer, and ran a great career in
the South-west until he closed his active service as vice president
and general manager of the Nevada, California and Oregon Railroad. In
July, 1887, finding his health seriously impaired, he sought rest on
his ranch in Vaca Valley, Salano {Solano} County,
California. |
| His gratitude to his native State for the
education she gave him has been expressed to the writer in touching
terms. He said he could not forget what his alma mater had done for
him in the training with which she had so richly endowed him. |
| Col. Heriot's specialty was topographical
engineering. It is said Col. Heriot was a favorite of Gen. Grant, of
whose road, the Texas Western, he had charge for four years. |
| In November, 1857, he married Clara G.,
daughter of Major Hayward, of Florida, and having a large planting
interest in Louisiana. His wife was an admirable woman of fine type. A
correspondence with her ten years ago revealed to me her wifely
virtues. In him there was the nobility of manhood. In her was the
nobility of womanhood, nobly planned. |
| Edgar LaRoche Heriot reflected honor upon
the names of LaRouche, Hayward, and Heriot, as well as upon his alma
mater and his State. It was not his privilege to die for his country,
but after a long and honorable service in the battle of life, it was
reserved for the warrior to lay aside his well-worn armor and to pass
away in peace with honor. |
| Well may the waters of the restless
Atlantic and of the peaceful Pacific unite in a requiem to his memory.
May we not trust that the poet's faith may be applied to Heriot's
memory? |
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| "In seed of laurel n the earth |
| The blossom of his fame is blown |
| And somewhere waiting for its birth |
| The shaft is in the stone." |
| James P. Thomas |
| November {Should be December} 17,
1903 |