Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Thomas B. Davis Collection, mss 00026, Virginia Military Institute Archives, Lexington, Virginia

Biographical/Historical Information

Thomas Bowker Davis was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1843 (some records show 1842). He entered the Virginia Military Institute in January 1862 and resigned in January 1864 in order to join the Confederate Army. Davis enlisted as a Private in Company D, 2nd Virginia Cavalry Regiment. He was mortally wounded in action and captured on October 8, 1864 near Fisher's Hill; he died in prison on October 20.

Scope and Content Information

The Thomas B. Davis collection contains two items. The first is a letter from Davis to his sister, Mrs. Camillus Christian, dated March 22, 1863. This letter was written while Davis was a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA. In this letter he mentions activities at VMI, Civil War news ("a considerable cavalry fight on the Rappahannock"), the unusual late snows, and provides an early use of the term rat as a reference to new cadets ("The legislature is still cutting up about our maltreating the new cadets, or as we call them, Rats....says that we are a set of precocious youths who came here to avoid conscription"). The second item in the collection is a VMI cadet account book containing school expenses.