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George Schuyler Thomas George Schuyler Thomas, son of Schuyler Thomas and Sabrena Thomas Scruggs, married his cousin Mary Lyndsay Sweeney, daughter of Albert Augustus Sweeney and Nancy Nevils Thomas. They were living in Tennessee when the Civil War broke out. According to his granddaughter Mary Lewis Sanford, George's "life was threatened as he talked secession so strongly and union sentiment was strong there [in Tennessee]. Tennessee was a border state...though it did secede. They left there in the night and went to the Schuyler Thomas home in Buckingham [County, Virginia]. He left his family at his father's in Buckingham and went right into the Confederate Army." According to Peter S. Carmichael's history of the Purcell Artillery, after terrible Confederate reverses throughout the South, Captain Reuben Lynsay Walker decided in early 1862 to raise a battalion of artillery. At the end of February he placed ads in Richmond newspapers that read, "Wanted, immediately, three hundred respectable and able-bodied men, to form an Artillery Battalion to serve for two years, or during the war." In Richmond, Walker opened a recruiting office on Main and Cary. George Thomas enlisted on March 4, 1862, in Richmond, perhaps at this very recruiting office. He served in the Purcell Artillery until at least February of 1865, and most probably until the end of the war. George's daughter Virginia Thomas Lewis inherited eighteen letters he wrote to his wife Mary ("Moll") during the war. The letters were inherited by Virginia's daughter Mary Lewis Sanford.
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