Thomas S. Martin, (CSA), U.S. Senator

http://encyclopediavirginia.org/Martin_Thomas_Staples_1847-1919

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Martin

Thomas Staples Martin (July 29, 1847 – November 12, 1919) was an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician from Charlottesville, Virginia. Immediately after his service in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, he attended the University of Virginia, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. He represented Virginia in the United States Senate for nearly twenty-five years.

His home, Faulkner House, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Martin died while in office, at his home in Charlottesville, and is buried in the cemetery of the University of Virginia there.

Martin was born on July 29, 1847, in Scottsville to John Samuel Martin and Martha Ann Staples Martin. He was one of eleven children. His father worked in his own father-in-law's grocery store before becoming a partner in the store and later serving as a justice of the peace and the manager of a local woolens mill. Martin was educated at home and in local schools before enrolling at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington in 1864. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), VMI cadets were called on to fight in the Battle of New Market on May 15, 1864. Fifty-seven cadets were killed or wounded that day, some of them as young as fifteen years old. Martin, sixteen at the time, missed the action due to ill health, but later participated in the Lynchburg Campaign and fighting around the Confederate capital at Richmond.

After the war, Martin attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for two years, leaving in order to support his family after the death of his father. He began reading the law in 1869 and was subsequently admitted to the Virginia bar, developing a successful practice in Scottsville and the surrounding counties of Albemarle and Fluvanna. Early in the 1880s he became a district counsel to the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. His work for the railroad eventually introduced Martin to Democratic Party politics, although he preferred to operate out of the public eye. A bachelor well into his forties, he shunned publicity and was not known as a commanding speaker, but he was highly regarded for his diligence, knowledge of the law, and loyalty.