|
Confederate Veteran Obituary of George Thomas
Darracott
|
|
|
|
Vol. 23 1915 |
| P. 324 |
| Another soldier has answered
the last roll call, another form has fallen from the thin gray line.
At the home of his daughter, Mrs. George B. Carter, Petersburg, Va.,
on Christmas Eve, 1914, the joyous season he loved so well, George
Thomas Darracott, after an illness of three days, lay down peacefully
and slept the sleep from which there is no earthly waking. Had he
lived till December 27, he would have been seventy years old. Writing
to a distant friend of the "other side" a few days before he
was taken sick, he said: "I am still on the lines at Petersburg,
Va., well and happy." Yes, still on the lines at Petersburg, he
is now sleeping in old Blandford Cemetery, close to the trenches where
during the war he stayed under fire from the enemy's guns night and
day for nine months. |
| Comrade Darracott entered the
Confederate army at Falling Water June 20, 1861, at the early age of
sixteen years. He served with Stonewall Jackson in the Valley Campaign
and was detailed to haul locomotives captured from the Federal
government. Being a mere boy, General Jackson called him
"George." After the battles around Richmond, he was
transferred to the Confederate States locomotive works at Raleigh, N.
C., under Capt. Thomas R. Sharp, his uncle. He reenlisted in July 1863
in Captain Sturdivant's Virginia battery and assisted in the capture
of the gunboat Smith Brigg at Smithfield, Va. He fought in the battles
of the 15th, 16th, 18th, and 20th of June around Petersburg and
assisted in working the mortar guns from the Crater to the Appomattox
River, having had the distinction of firing the last shot of his
battery at the evacuation of Petersburg. He was with Gordon's Corps in
the assault and capture of Fort Steadman in March, 1865. After the
evacuation of Petersburg, his command was disbanded at Lynchburg, Va. |
| He married Miss Mary Temple
Dabney, of Hanover County, Va., a few years after the war. Seven
children survive them. For over forty years he was a member and
vestryman of the Episcopal Church, whose teachings he loved so well. |
|