SAMUEL J. HURT,
Born in Nottoway county, Virginia, in 1820, is a son of Merewether
Hurt, who was born in Lunenburg county, was a resident of Virginia
through life, and is now deceased. His mother, whose maiden name was
Amy Ann Morgan, has been some years dead. In Brunswick county, Virginia,
in 1865, he married Julia E. Stith, and their children are two sons,
Pelham and Samuel J., jr., Mrs. Hurt was born in Brunswick county,
in 1839, the daughter of Needham Washington Stith, now deceased.
The subject of this sketch went to school in early days in his native
county, then was two years in the dry goods business with L. L.
Parsons, of Petersburg, when about sixteen years old. Subsequently
he returned to school, in Dinwiddie county, attended Jefferson Academy,
and prepared himself for the practice of medicine. Abandoning that
idea, he returned to Petersburg and entered into the grocery and
commission business, in which he continued until the civil war.
He entered the Confederate service in 1861, with the Petersburg
Cavalry, volunteers to the State service, and was made company
quartermaster, the company going to Norfolk. Soon after he was
detached, and made post quartermaster at Suffolk, where he remained
until the evacuation; was then transferred to the commissary department
and served in same till the close of the war. He then returned to
Petersburg having, as may be recorded of many whose sketches appear
in these pages, sacrificed everything but life and honor to the cause,
and began life again, building up a business from the foundation,
resuming the same line he was engaged in before the war—groceries
and commission.
