The Conrad boys in the Confederate service.
Mr. Robert Y. Conrad, of Winchester, was one of the leading lawyers in Virginia.
He was a member of the Virginia Convention of 1861 and chairman of the Committee of Federal Relations.
He had six sons.
The youngest was about twelve or thirteen years of age when the war began, but the other five were in the service, viz.:
1. Daniel B. Conrad, assistant surgeon United States Navy; resigned in 186; served in Confederate States Navy, fleet surgeon for Admiral Buchanan at the battle of Mobile Bay.
After the war he was superintendent of the Central Lunatic Asylum for several years, and then of the Western Asylum, at Staunton.
He died in Winchester five or six years ago.
2. Powell Conrad, lawyer, engineer in Confederate States Army.
Died in service from typhoid fever.
3. Holmes Conrad, enlisted in Newtown Cavalry (a Frederick county company), First Virginia Regiment of Cavalry (J. E. B. Stuart's old regiment); became adjutant of the Eleventh Virginia Cavalry, commissioned major and served on the staff of General T. L. Rosser; practised law in Winchester until 1893; member of the Legislature, Assistant Attorney General and Solicitor General under President Cleveland, and is now a resident of Winchester, but has his law office in Washington, D. C.
4. Charles F. Conrad was a member of Chew's Battery of Horse Artillery, after the war became a civil engineer, and is now residing at Staunton.
5. Frank Conrad also served in Chew's Battery, was a lawyer and civil engineer, and died four or five years ago in Leesburg, Va.
On one side of the square on which Mr. Robert Y. Conrad's residence was situated, there were twenty boys and young men from sixteen to thirty-five years of age, and every one of them entered the Confederate service and were splendid soldiers.
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Among them was Colonel (afterwards Governor) F. W. M. Holliday.
During the war there were seven dwelling houses on that square and six of them furnished soldiers to the Confederate States Army.
The only males who did not enlist were boys under sixteen and men over fifty years of age.
Holmes A. Conrad and H. Tucker Conrad, the only sons of Mr. David Holmes Conrad, of Martinsburg (now West Virginia), and nephews of Mr. Robert Y. Conrad, belonged to the Martinsburg Company (D) of the Second Virginia Regiment, Stonewall Brigade.
The two brothers were killed by the same volley at the battle of First Manassas. Major Robert W. Hunter, now Secretary of Confederate Records, was a lieutenant in that company and adjutant of the regiment.
One of the lieutenants of the company was Peyton R. Harrison, a first cousin of the Conrad boys and brother-in-law of Major Hunter.
Owing to a misapprehension of orders, the left of the regiment fell back and got into some confusion; but as soon as the mistake was discovered the officers tried and succeeded in rallying the men. Lieutenant Harrison was shot down; two of his men undertook to lift him up and take him to the rear.
He said: ‘Lay me down; you can do nothing for me, I am not afraid to die. Rally to the charge,’ and in a few minutes was dead.
The remains of the two Conrad boys and of Lieutenant Harrison were taken to Martinsburg, and reached there after sundown, and were buried by moonlight.
At that time the people of the Shenandoah Valley had not been accustomed to war and its horrors, and the death of these three men made a great impression on the citizens of Martinsburg.
A party who was present at the buriel says:
We buried them with their cousin, Captain Peyton R. Harrison, together in one tomb.By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
Our lanterns dimly burning.
