To the Editor:

The Adjutant General’s office records show that my grandfather, James T. Bland, private, Company C 40th Battalion, Virginia Calvary, CSA, enlisted Sept. 22, 1862, at age 17.

He was captured and paroled at Fort Norfolk on June 27, 1863. This company became Company C, 24th Regiment, Virginia Calvary, and the Master Rolls for September and October 1863 show him present.

He was again captured July 28, 1864, at Petersburg and imprisoned at Point Lookout, Md., and Elmira, N.Y. There he got smallpox, and when he was paroled on March 10, 1865, he was sent to Boulewares Wharf, James River, Va. There, he was received by the Confederate Agent of Exchange on March 15, 1865.

The family story goes that he was met there with a mule and cart on which a featherbed had been placed for him to ride on because he was so thin and weak.

During the war, the Yankees were furnished with horses, but the Confederates had to furnish their own.

Bland’s first horse was named Mark Anthony, but later renamed Fancy. It is said that a fellow soldier held her and other horses while Bland was in the thick of battle where he chose to be.

When he was captured the second time, his uncle George, also in that regiment, brought Fancy home. There she lived a long life and raised a colt.

After the war, my grandfather sold the colt for a good profit, and he took this money plus the 7½ acres given him by his father to start a business. He married Anna Irby in 1873, and they had three daughters and one son, Dr. J. M. Bland, my father.

Kitty Lassiter
Boykins