I have been remiss in not looking into this officer before now.
I’ve seen hundreds (thousands?) of pay vouchers issued at Richmond, VA over the signature of Major John Ambler among documents in Confederate soldiers’ Compiled Service Records (CSRs). If you’ve done work in the CSRs you’ll know of him.
By way of example I offer one such voucher: for a soldier’s pay for October 1863. Here’s his signature at the bottom.
I may be the only one amused by it, but this particular document shows Ambler’s own pay for that month and comes from his CSR jacket. $162 both issued and received by him.
Soldiers were generally paid by their company officers or regimental quartermasters in the field, but if they were in Richmond, VA, the Confederate capital, away from their unit and had pay coming, – perhaps leaving on or returning from a furlough, on a detail, or just out of the hospital – they could receive pay directly from Paymaster Ambler or one of the other officers in his office.
And thousands did.
John Ambler was born in April 1821 in Fauquier County, VA, son of wealthy planter and War of 1812 veteran Thomas Marshall Ambler. His father, his grandfather and namesake John Ambler (b. 1762), and his great-grandfather Edward (b. 1732) were all born in Jamestown, VA. Though g-g-grandfather Richard was born in Yorkshire in 1690, he came to Virginia in 1716, and his wife Elizabeth Jaquelin (b. 1709) was also a native of Jamestown, as was her mother Martha Cary (b. 1686) before her.
This Ambler line was prominent in Virginia from it’s early colonization, and apparently rich from the beginning – wealth inherited in and from England and earned in Virginia.
John attended the University of Virginia in 1837-38 at 16 and 17 years old, and by 1850 was a lawyer living with his parents in Fauquier County. He was later US Marshal for Western Virginia at Richmond (1852-53), practiced law in Winchester, and was a merchant in the village of Waterloo, VA.
He married Fairfax-born Anna Maria Mason (1825-1863) in August 1847 and they had 5 children. Their youngest, George Mason Ambler, died soon after his first birthday in January 1863.
Anna’s father James Murray Mason, former US Congressman (1837-39) and Senator (1847-1861), was later one of the Confederacy’s two Commissioners to Great Britain and France [see also The Trent Affair ], and spent most of the war in London.
Anna died in August 1863, too young at 38, at her mother’s home in Richmond. John never remarried.
On 29 June 1861, then 40 years old, he was appointed Captain and Assistant Quartermaster (AQM), CSA, and he was promoted to Major on 27 June 1862. He served at that rank as a paymaster in the headquarters of the Quartermaster’s Department in Richmond into 1865, and was surrendered at Greensboro, NC.
He was apparently very well liked, a genial and helpful man to many who had business with him. One such was newly commissioned Lieutenant W W Goldsborough, later Major of the 2nd Maryland Infantry, who wrote:
Some funds were now to be raised on the strength of the commission to pay board bills, etc., and I therefore directed my steps to the office of dear, good old Major John Ambler, paymaster, upon whom I had more than once before called when in trouble—and what Marylander had not. They were his especial favorites…
In 1870 he was again living with his parents near Warrenton in Fauquier County, but heard a call to preach at age 51, in 1871, and by 1872 was a Protestant Episcopal minister at Luray Parish, Markham Station, VA. In 1874 he was at St. Johns in Alexandria, VA and in 1880 in Haymarket, VA. He served altogether 14 years in Virginia and another 4 (1886-91) in West Virginia, at Moundsville.
His bishop described his character and personality in those later years:
Mr. Ambler was a conspicuous example of old-fashioned integrity and simplicity of character. With a genuine love of all that was pure and high and noble, he had a genuine scorn of all that was low, mean and small in any way … so he moved in and out among us like a grand old man, as he was.
He died, still in harness, in Moundsville at age 69 in 1891. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.
I’ve not found a war-era picture of John, but here he is near the end of his life:
Here are some of the other officers listed with him in the Pay Bureau:
Major John Baytop Cary (1819-1898). Was a teacher and founder/superintendent of the Hampton (VA) Military Academy. He was Lieutenant Colonel of the 32nd Virginia Infantry into May 1862, then in staff positions with General Magruder. He was commissioned Major and Quartermaster on 16 August 1862 and was paymaster to hospitalized soldiers in Richmond into 1865. After the war he was a grocer, insurance agent, and Superintendent of Schools in Richmond.
Captain Joseph Smith (not J.E.) Duckwall (1820-1892). He’d been a lawyer in Morgan County, VA (now WV) before the war, was in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1859, and had brief service in the 89th Virginia Militia in 1861. He was appointed Captain and Assistant Quartermaster, CSA on 6 October 1862 and was in Richmond through the war, tasked primarily with investigating solider claims for back pay. He was paroled in 22 April 1865 and was afterward a lawyer and was elected district judge in West Virginia in 1888.
Captain George Annesley Barksdale (1835-1910). He was Treasurer of the Gallego Flour Mills in Richmond before the war, his father a partner in the firm, and was appointed Quartermaster of the 16th Virginia Infantry in July 1861. He was commissioned Captain and Assistant Quartermaster, CSA 2 months later on 16 September 1861. He served through the war in Richmond and was surrendered and paroled at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865. He was again in business in Richmond after the war and was also recording secretary of the Virginia Historical Society. The Horse Solider in Gettysburg sold a photograph of him, and there’s a stunning wartime image of him featured in the Summer 2017 issue of Military Images magazine.
Captain John Thomas Beale Dorsey (1821-1898). A lawyer in Carroll County and planter in Howard County, MD, he had married 3 times (1844, 48, 56) before the war. He was appointed Captain and Assistant Quartermaster, CSA on 29 March 1862 and was a paymaster at Richmond through the war. He was afterward State’s Attorney for Howard County and in the legislature.
Major John Booton “Boot” Hill (1841-1913). He had been a clerk working for his uncle US Army Paymaster Henry Hill in New York City up to the war, when both “went South”; also 2nd cousin to General A.P. Hill. He enlisted on 23 April 1861 in the 7th Virginia Infantry and was elected Captain of Company A. He was commissioned Captain and AQM on 4 October 1861 and Major on 20 December 1862. He remained in the Pay Bureau to February 1864 then went into the field as Quartermaster to Generals Nathan Evans, R.H. Anderson, and other senior commanders. He was an accountant and corporate Treasurer in Richmond after the war. The Virginia Historical Society has some of his wartime letters [finding aid].
Captain Henry Oden Clagett (1833-1904). He was appointed Captain and AQM on 16 November 1861 and served on the staffs of Generals J.E. Johnston, Holmes, and Pemberton to August 1862, when he was assigned to the headquarters in Richmond. He was paymaster there into 1865. After the war he ran a newspaper and was Leesburg, VA town’s recorder by 1873 and to at least 1883. He was Mayor there 1889-93. He died in Baltimore, MD and was buried in Union Cemetery, Leesburg.
Captain John Mason (1841-1925). Born in Winchester, VA, he was the youngest son of US Senator James M Mason and was John Ambler’s brother-in-law. In 1860 he was a farmer living with his parents at White Hall in Frederick County, VA and he enlisted on 18 April 1861 as a Private in the 2nd Virginia Infantry. He was appointed Captain and AQM on 21 October 1861 and assigned to the Valley District (T.J. Jackson) but was dropped in February 1862 for failing to post a required bond. He was reinstated on 15 April and sent to the Quartermaster General in Richmond. He was a paymaster there for Richmond hospitals into January 1864, then transferred to staff positions in the field to the end of the war – with McLaughlin’s and Cutshaw’s artillery battalions and Generals Edward Johnson and A.L. Long. He was paroled at Appomattox Court House, VA in April 1865. In 1880 he was in Falls Church, VA, married relatively late, in 1888, and by 1920 was a US Customs agent in Richmond. He, too, is in Union Cemetery, Leesburg.
Captain James F. West (c. 1831-1867). His middle name may have been Flood. A tobacconist with his prosperous father-in-law R.A. Mayo’s Tobacco Works in Richmond, he was appointed Captain and Assistant Quartermaster of the 15th Virginia Infantry by August 1861 and Captain and AQM, CSA for duty as a paymaster at headquarters in Richmond in January 1862. He was there to the end of the war and died in Richmond fairly soon after, at age 36, in September 1867. He’s also in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.
Notes
The clipping at the top is from the 1863 edition of The Stranger’s Guide and Official Directory for the City of Richmond: showing the location of the public buildings and offices of the Confederate, state and city governments, residences of the principal officers, etc. It’s online from the Emory University Libraries.
Service basics for all of these these officers come from Robert E.L. Krick’s Staff Officers in Gray (2003).
Personal details for Ambler and his ancestors are from the US Census, family genealogists, notably Louise Perquet du Bellet in Volume II of Some Prominent Virginia Families (1907, online [pdf] from the Internet Archive) , Krick, Protestant Episcopal Journals, A History and Record of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of West Virginia (1902) – source also of his photo, and a listing from the US Marshals Service.
The Goldsborough quote above comes from his Maryland Line in the Confederate Army, 1861-1865 (1900), online from the Hathi trust and others.
The Pay Bureau’s offices were across Bank Street from the grounds and edifice of the Confederate Capitol – now the Virginia State Capitol. That location is today home to the US Courthouse, home of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and other offices.
In 1863, as mentioned in the Stranger’s Guide, the paymasters worked in an engine house, previously the Blues Armory, home of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues, a militia unit which drilled in Richmond in one form or another from 1789 to the 1960s. The last iteration of the Blues Armory was built in 1910 at Marshall and 6th Streets, and it’s survives, mostly, today.
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