| Jeremiah Wallace Nunnally was born near Chester,
Virginia, on May 20, 1843. The site of his family home, called “Les
Trades,” is now the location of the Chester campus of John
Tyler Community College.
During the War Between the States, Jeremiah
W. Nunnally served as a private in the Confederate Signal Corps.
His unit was known as the 1st Company, Independent Signal Corps,
Captain Nathaniel W. Small commanding.
Although Confederate forces conducted signal
operations in Virginia as early as the Battle of First Manassas,
it was not until April 19, 1862, that the Confederate Congress authorized
the creation of a Signal Corps as a distinct branch of the Confederate
army. General Orders No. 40 of the Adjutant & Inspector Generals
Office, dated May 29, 1862, created the Signal Bureau under command
of Colonel William Norris and attached it directly to the Adjutant
and Inspector General’s Department. “No uniform was prescribed
for the Signal Corps. Officers wore the uniform of the general staff
…, and the detailed men,” which included Private Nunnally,
wore the uniform “of the arm of the service to which they belonged….”
“The detailed men in all of the various branches of the service
numbered about fifteen hundred, and it was a remarkable fact, that
while these men were often employed in independent service, and
were in possession of important secrets, not one of them ever deserted
or betrayed his trust.” |
|
Private Nunnally served in the Signal Corps
faithfully until the end of the war and surrendered with Lee’s
army at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. Family tradition
says that he walked back to Chester after the surrender, arriving
home on April 14. He told his family and friends that the Yankees
were very nice to him, that they gave him food and treated him with
respect.
After the war, Jeremiah Nunnally worked as a
storekeeper at his family’s store on the Richmond-Petersburg
Turnpike and also as a lumber merchant in Chesterfield County. On
April 14, 1880, exactly 15 years after he returned home from Appomattox,
the 36-year-old storekeeper married Josephine Jordan of Chesterfield.
They had two daughters, Florence and Caroline. For eight years,
from 1900 to 1908, Jeremiah Nunnally served on Chesterfield County’s
Board of Supervisors. He died in Chester on February 2, 1914, at
age 70 and was buried in the Jordan Family Cemetery off Chalkley
Road.
The memory of Private Jeremiah Wallace Nunnally
of the 1st Company, Independent Signal Corps, Confederate States
Army, is perpetuated in this camp by his direct descendant, Compatriot
Donald E. Graves.
|
