| John
Alvin White was born in Surry County, Virginia, in 1840.
In the late 1850s, the young Tidewater farmer married
Amanda Spain, a native of Ireland, in either Surry or
Isle of Wight County. Their son John Alvin White, Jr.
was born in Isle of Wight County in July 1857.
On May 14, 1861, John Alvin, Sr., now a resident of
Halifax County and still a farmer, enlisted in Captain
D. A. Claiborne’s Company of riflemen, the Dan
River Rifles, at South Boston. The Dan River Rifles
soon became Company K of the 14th Virginia Infantry.
The 14th Virginia Infantry consisted of companies from
Chesterfield, Amelia, Bedford, Fluvanna, Halifax, and
Mecklenburg counties. The regiment was organized in
May 1861 and entered Confederate service at Richmond
on July 1, 1861, under Colonel James Gregory Hodges.
After serving in Tidewater Virginia and North Carolina
from the summer of 1861 to the spring of 1862, the 14th
joined a brigade of Virginia regiments under Brigadier
General Lewis A. Armistead. This brigade became a part
of General George E. Pickett’s division of General
James Longstreet’s First Corps in the Army of
Northern Virginia. The 14th fought under Armistead and
Pickett at Seven Pines, in the Seven Days, at Second
Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Fredericksburg, and in the
operations at Suffolk in April and May 1863.
Private White’s early service with the 14th Virginia
was not a happy one. In July 1861, he was sick at home;
he was in fact reported as dead on the regiment’s
first payroll. In September 1861, he was reported as
absent without leave. He was back with his company in
November and remained with the 14th Virginia through
the first winter of the War, but he was reported AWOL
again from late March through June 1862, missing most
of the fighting around Richmond. In July he was with
his company again and remained with it through its movements
and actions in northern Virginia. But on September 17,
the day of the Battle of Sharpsburg, he was reported
as AWOL again. In truth, he was absent sick in the Camp
Winder Hospital in Richmond, so he missed the Maryland
campaign. His illness also caused him to miss the fight
at Fredericksburg in December 1862. By then, he had
been reassigned as a hospital nurse in Richmond, where
he remained through the second winter of the War. By
March 1863, when the regiment was back in Richmond,
Private White was with his company again. He went with
them to the Blackwater Line and to Suffolk that spring
and must have been thrilled to be marching so close
to his birthplace.
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The 14th Virginia returned
from Suffolk in the spring of 1863 in time to join General
Lee’s army for its march into Pennsylvania. This
time Private White crossed the Potomac and was with his
regiment in the bloodiest battle of the War Between the
States. At Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, the 14th Virginia
fought gallantly in Pickett’s Charge and suffered
heavy casualties along with its sister regiments in Armistead’s
Brigade. The regiment’s commander, Colonel Hodges,
was killed. Private White of Company K almost suffered
the same fate as his colonel. Wounded by shrapnel in his
back, he fell into the hands of the enemy, who sent him
to the general hospital at Chester, Pennsylvania. When
he was well enough to move, in October 1863, the Yankees
sent him to Hammond General Hospital at Point Lookout,
Maryland, where he was held as a prisoner of war. He was
exchanged in March 1864 and returned to his unit via Fort
McHenry, Maryland, and City Point, Virginia. Still suffering
from his wound, he was sent home on 60-day sick furlough,
but he probably never returned to his unit. In May 1865,
exactly a month after General Lee surrendered at Appomattox,
Private White was given his end-of-war parole by an officer
of the Sixth Army Corps, Federal Army of the Potomac.
The memory of Private John Alvin White, Company K,
14th Virginia Infantry, is perpetuated in the camp by
his descendant, Compatriot William “Smokey”
Cook.
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