A TRIBUTE WELL DESERVED.
The Heroic Life of Lyman L. Foster A Noble Record.
Norfolk, Va. June 2, 1894.
Editor Norfolk Virginian:
Mr. Editor:
I observed in the Richmond Times on last Wednesday, in that city, a notice of the death of Lyman L. Foster, late of Portsmouth, Va. in which it is made to appear that he served in the volunteer navy of the United States during the late war. This is incorrect. I believe no nobler breast was ever decorated with Confederate gray, no soldier more devoted to the Lost Cause than he.
I knew him in his early boyhood, when, resigning his commission as a naval cadet at Annapolis (where he stood high) he came to Murfreesboro, N.C., his brother, Charles H. Foster, formerly of the Norfolk Day Book, being at the time editor and proprietor of the Murfreesboro Citizen.
His middle name of Beecher was discarded by him upon the outbreak of the war, and my own of Livingston substituted instead.
About the time of the surrender of Fort Sumter in 1861 he went to Charleston and enlisted in a volunteer company there. Shortly afterwards he returned to his adopted Southern home and from there came to this city in the early spring of that year, and became a member of Company F.
In the summer following he joined the Hertford Light Infantry (my old company) and was elected lieutenant, but being a Northern man (a native of Maine) and some objection being raised by some fools on account of it, he resigned his commission as such and enlisted in Capt. (afterwards Col.) Harrell's company, First North Carolina State Troops, as a private, where he did gallant service, falling, as was supposed, mortally wounded at Gaines Mill in 1862.
After a long and painful lingering betwixt life and death he recovered in part, and was declared by his surgeon unfit for service.
His devotion to our cause would not permit him to rest upon his well earned laurels, purchased at the price of wounds that disabled him for life, and shortly afterwards, through the influence of his old friend, the late and honored Chief Justice of North Carolina, Hon. W. N. H. Smith, then a member of our Congress, and of his general, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Confederate States Navy and given command of the gunboat Drewry, of the Drewry's Bluff squadron. Here he served with his usual conspicuous gallantry, with his own hand applying the match to the magazine of his ship just before the surrender, to prevent its capture, barely escaping from the explosion with his life.
A paroled prisoner, he returned like the rest of us, to civil life, broken in fortune and health. No truer heart ever followed the Southern cross. He leaves behind him a widow and several children in straightened circumstances. He leaves behind him also many sincere friends, who mourn his untimely taking off, but more than these, and dearer to the heart of a true soldier, he leaves a record as a Southern patriot and an "A.N.V." man that a Bayard or a Sidney might well be proud of.
Herbert L. Worthington
The Heroic Life of Lyman L. Foster A Noble Record.
Norfolk, Va. June 2, 1894.
Editor Norfolk Virginian:
Mr. Editor:
I observed in the Richmond Times on last Wednesday, in that city, a notice of the death of Lyman L. Foster, late of Portsmouth, Va. in which it is made to appear that he served in the volunteer navy of the United States during the late war. This is incorrect. I believe no nobler breast was ever decorated with Confederate gray, no soldier more devoted to the Lost Cause than he.
I knew him in his early boyhood, when, resigning his commission as a naval cadet at Annapolis (where he stood high) he came to Murfreesboro, N.C., his brother, Charles H. Foster, formerly of the Norfolk Day Book, being at the time editor and proprietor of the Murfreesboro Citizen.
His middle name of Beecher was discarded by him upon the outbreak of the war, and my own of Livingston substituted instead.
About the time of the surrender of Fort Sumter in 1861 he went to Charleston and enlisted in a volunteer company there. Shortly afterwards he returned to his adopted Southern home and from there came to this city in the early spring of that year, and became a member of Company F.
In the summer following he joined the Hertford Light Infantry (my old company) and was elected lieutenant, but being a Northern man (a native of Maine) and some objection being raised by some fools on account of it, he resigned his commission as such and enlisted in Capt. (afterwards Col.) Harrell's company, First North Carolina State Troops, as a private, where he did gallant service, falling, as was supposed, mortally wounded at Gaines Mill in 1862.
After a long and painful lingering betwixt life and death he recovered in part, and was declared by his surgeon unfit for service.
His devotion to our cause would not permit him to rest upon his well earned laurels, purchased at the price of wounds that disabled him for life, and shortly afterwards, through the influence of his old friend, the late and honored Chief Justice of North Carolina, Hon. W. N. H. Smith, then a member of our Congress, and of his general, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Confederate States Navy and given command of the gunboat Drewry, of the Drewry's Bluff squadron. Here he served with his usual conspicuous gallantry, with his own hand applying the match to the magazine of his ship just before the surrender, to prevent its capture, barely escaping from the explosion with his life.
A paroled prisoner, he returned like the rest of us, to civil life, broken in fortune and health. No truer heart ever followed the Southern cross. He leaves behind him a widow and several children in straightened circumstances. He leaves behind him also many sincere friends, who mourn his untimely taking off, but more than these, and dearer to the heart of a true soldier, he leaves a record as a Southern patriot and an "A.N.V." man that a Bayard or a Sidney might well be proud of.
Herbert L. Worthington
A TRIBUTE WELL DESERVED.
The Heroic Life of Lyman L. Foster A Noble Record.
Norfolk, Va. June 2, 1894.
Editor Norfolk Virginian:
Mr. Editor:
I observed in the Richmond Times on last Wednesday, in that city, a notice of the death of Lyman L. Foster, late of Portsmouth, Va. in which it is made to appear that he served in the volunteer navy of the United States during the late war. This is incorrect. I believe no nobler breast was ever decorated with Confederate gray, no soldier more devoted to the Lost Cause than he.
I knew him in his early boyhood, when, resigning his commission as a naval cadet at Annapolis (where he stood high) he came to Murfreesboro, N.C., his brother, Charles H. Foster, formerly of the Norfolk Day Book, being at the time editor and proprietor of the Murfreesboro Citizen.
His middle name of Beecher was discarded by him upon the outbreak of the war, and my own of Livingston substituted instead.
About the time of the surrender of Fort Sumter in 1861 he went to Charleston and enlisted in a volunteer company there. Shortly afterwards he returned to his adopted Southern home and from there came to this city in the early spring of that year, and became a member of Company F.
In the summer following he joined the Hertford Light Infantry (my old company) and was elected lieutenant, but being a Northern man (a native of Maine) and some objection being raised by some fools on account of it, he resigned his commission as such and enlisted in Capt. (afterwards Col.) Harrell's company, First North Carolina State Troops, as a private, where he did gallant service, falling, as was supposed, mortally wounded at Gaines Mill in 1862.
After a long and painful lingering betwixt life and death he recovered in part, and was declared by his surgeon unfit for service.
His devotion to our cause would not permit him to rest upon his well earned laurels, purchased at the price of wounds that disabled him for life, and shortly afterwards, through the influence of his old friend, the late and honored Chief Justice of North Carolina, Hon. W. N. H. Smith, then a member of our Congress, and of his general, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Confederate States Navy and given command of the gunboat Drewry, of the Drewry's Bluff squadron. Here he served with his usual conspicuous gallantry, with his own hand applying the match to the magazine of his ship just before the surrender, to prevent its capture, barely escaping from the explosion with his life.
A paroled prisoner, he returned like the rest of us, to civil life, broken in fortune and health. No truer heart ever followed the Southern cross. He leaves behind him a widow and several children in straightened circumstances. He leaves behind him also many sincere friends, who mourn his untimely taking off, but more than these, and dearer to the heart of a true soldier, he leaves a record as a Southern patriot and an "A.N.V." man that a Bayard or a Sidney might well be proud of.
Herbert L. Worthington
The Heroic Life of Lyman L. Foster A Noble Record.
Norfolk, Va. June 2, 1894.
Editor Norfolk Virginian:
Mr. Editor:
I observed in the Richmond Times on last Wednesday, in that city, a notice of the death of Lyman L. Foster, late of Portsmouth, Va. in which it is made to appear that he served in the volunteer navy of the United States during the late war. This is incorrect. I believe no nobler breast was ever decorated with Confederate gray, no soldier more devoted to the Lost Cause than he.
I knew him in his early boyhood, when, resigning his commission as a naval cadet at Annapolis (where he stood high) he came to Murfreesboro, N.C., his brother, Charles H. Foster, formerly of the Norfolk Day Book, being at the time editor and proprietor of the Murfreesboro Citizen.
His middle name of Beecher was discarded by him upon the outbreak of the war, and my own of Livingston substituted instead.
About the time of the surrender of Fort Sumter in 1861 he went to Charleston and enlisted in a volunteer company there. Shortly afterwards he returned to his adopted Southern home and from there came to this city in the early spring of that year, and became a member of Company F.
In the summer following he joined the Hertford Light Infantry (my old company) and was elected lieutenant, but being a Northern man (a native of Maine) and some objection being raised by some fools on account of it, he resigned his commission as such and enlisted in Capt. (afterwards Col.) Harrell's company, First North Carolina State Troops, as a private, where he did gallant service, falling, as was supposed, mortally wounded at Gaines Mill in 1862.
After a long and painful lingering betwixt life and death he recovered in part, and was declared by his surgeon unfit for service.
His devotion to our cause would not permit him to rest upon his well earned laurels, purchased at the price of wounds that disabled him for life, and shortly afterwards, through the influence of his old friend, the late and honored Chief Justice of North Carolina, Hon. W. N. H. Smith, then a member of our Congress, and of his general, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Confederate States Navy and given command of the gunboat Drewry, of the Drewry's Bluff squadron. Here he served with his usual conspicuous gallantry, with his own hand applying the match to the magazine of his ship just before the surrender, to prevent its capture, barely escaping from the explosion with his life.
A paroled prisoner, he returned like the rest of us, to civil life, broken in fortune and health. No truer heart ever followed the Southern cross. He leaves behind him a widow and several children in straightened circumstances. He leaves behind him also many sincere friends, who mourn his untimely taking off, but more than these, and dearer to the heart of a true soldier, he leaves a record as a Southern patriot and an "A.N.V." man that a Bayard or a Sidney might well be proud of.
Herbert L. Worthington
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