Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/981

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CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY.
915

cent bonds at 96. The city paid also eight per cent on $75,000 loans to the banks, which was immediately reduced to six per cent. He has been president of the Jewish congregation, is a leading member of the Masonic order and popular with all on account of his devotion to his family, loyalty to his friends and generous public services. He was married in 1877 to Bertha V. Rosenbaum, of Richmond, and they have one daughter, Cecile Isabelle. A younger brother of Mr. Guggenheimer served in a Lynchburg battery, and a cousin, Maurice Guggenheimer, was with the Second Virginia artillery throughout the war.

Isaac Crawford Haas, of recent years prominently connected with the government printing office at Washington, D. C., was born at Woodstock, Va., April 25, 1843. The founders of his family in America were natives of the island of Corsica, bearing the name of De Haas, but the prefix was dropped several generations since. His great-great-grandfather, General DeHaas, won the confidence and friendship of Gen. George Washington during the war of the Revolution, and his memory is preserved by a portrait hanging in the Washington home at Mount Vernon. In the early settlement of the west, his grandfather, John Haas, emigrated from Virginia to Indiana, and, while discharging his duty as sheriff of Scott county, he was killed in an attempt to arrest a desperado. Isaac Haas, father of the subject of this sketch, was postmaster of Woodstock, Va., many years preceding the civil war, also during the period of 1861-65. I. C. Haas' mother (née Elizabeth Hoffman) was the only daughter of Abraham Hoffman, a well-known merchant in the Shenandoah valley in the early part of the nineteenth century. He also owned a plantation in Alabama. His mother's uncle, Col. Joseph Hoffman, commanded a regiment under Gen "Hickory" Jackson and bore a conspicuous part in the battle of New Orleans. Mr. I. C. Haas' first public service was as a page in the National house of representatives, receiving his appointment through Hon. John Letcher. Subsequently he served as a page in the United States Senate, where he became familiar with the ablest men of the ante-bellum days, giants of statesmanship, in the most momentous period of political history, and heard the stormy debates immediately preceding the civil war. With true allegiance to his State, Virginia, he enlisted, in April, 1861, as a private in the Tenth Virginia infantry and served with that command for one year, participating in the battles of McDowell, Winchester, and other engagements of Stonewall Jackson's famous Shenandoah valley campaign. In 1862 he re-enlisted for the war as a member of Chew's battery, Stuart's Horse Artillery, and was at his post of duty with this celebrated command in nearly all its principal engagements, during the latter part of the war being practically in continuous battle. Chew's battery was favorably known in the army of Northern Virginia. In the winter of 1864 he was captured at Woodstock by a squad of Union "Jessie scouts," who were able to approach him on account of being disguised in Southern gray. The "Jessie Scouts" were in advance of a regiment of General Sheridan's cavalry. Before this, however, Mr. Haas had experienced prison life at Camp Chase, Ohio, and he now resolved to risk his life rather than remain a prisoner of war. As the Federal command with seventeen prisoners approached General Sheri-