IN RETROSPECT

I can truthfully say that my entire life has been spent with cattle.  Even during my four years’ service in the Confederate army, the greater portion was spent with the commissary department, in charge of its beef supplies.  I was wounded early in the second year of the war and disabled as a soldier, but rather than remain at home I accepted a menial position under a quartermaster.  Those were strenuous times.  During Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania we followed in the wake of the army with over a thousand cattle, and after Gettysburg we led the retreat with double that number.  Near the close of the war we frequently had no cattle to hold, and I became little more than a camp-follower.

I was born in the Shenandoah Valley, northern Virginia, May 3, 1840.  My father was a thrifty planter and stockman, owned a few slaves, and as early as I can remember fed cattle every winter for the eastern markets.  Grandfather Anthony, who died before I was born, was a Scotchman who had emigrated to the Old Dominion at an early day, and acquired several large tracts of land on an affluent of the Shenandoah.  On my paternal side I never knew any of my ancestors, but have good cause to believe they were adventurers.  My mother’s maiden name was Reed; she was of a gentle family, who were able to trace their forbears beyond the colonial days, even to the gentry of England.  Generations of good birth were reflected in my mother; and across a rough and eventful life I can distinctly remember the refinement of her manners, her courtesy to guests, her kindness to child and slave.

My boyhood days were happy ones.  I attended a subscription school several miles from home, riding back and forth on a pony.  The studies were elementary, and though I never distinguished myself in my classes, I was always ready to race my pony, and never refused to play truant when the swimming was good.  Evidently my father never intended any of his boys for a professional career, though it was an earnest hope of my mother that all of us should receive a college education.  My elder brother and I early developed business instincts, buying calves and accompanying our father on his trading expeditions.  Once during a vacation, when we were about twelve and ten years old, both of us crossed the mountains with him into what is now West Virginia, where he bought about two hundred young steers and drove them back to our home in the valley.  I must have been blessed with an unfailing memory; over fifty years have passed since that, my first trip from home, yet I remember it vividly—­can recall conversations between my father and the sellers as they haggled over the cattle.  I remember the money, gold and silver, with which to pay for the steers, was carried by my father in ordinary saddle-bags thrown across his saddle.  As occasion demanded, frequently the funds were carried by a negro man of ours, and at night, when among acquaintances, the heavy saddle-bags were thrown into a corner, every one aware of their contents.