JOHN R. TODD
Was born at Smithfield, Virginia, on April 7, 1835, the son of Mallory
M. Todd, who died in 1854, and Fanny B. Todd, nee Dick, also now
deceased. He married, at Warrenton, Virginia, on September 15, 1875,
Lillie W. Payne, of Warrenton, daughter of Richards Payne, now
deceased, and Alice Payne, still a resident of Warrenton.
Mr. Todd went to school at the Norfolk Academy, and at the age of
seventeen years engaged as drug clerk with M. A. Santos, of Norfolk,
with whom he remained one year. He then went to Richmond, where
he was drug clerk for Alex Duvall three years, then to Montgomery,
Alabama, where he remained until the breaking out of the war.
He entered the Confederate States Army in April, 1861, and served
one year in the commissary department, then was transferred to the
Nitre and Mining Bureau, and sent to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he
took charge of the salt petre refinery, and where he continued till the
close of the war.
Returning then to Norfolk, he took up the drug business again for a
year, after that was clerk on a steamer for eight months, then accepted his
present position, as register of the water works, a position he has now
ably filled for fifteen years.
