Thomas Edmondson was a merchant in Emory, Washington County, Virginia when the War for Southern Independence broke out.  He enlisted in the Washington Mounted Rifles, which became Co. D of the 1^st Virginia Cavalry, May 14^th, 1861 as 3^rd Sergeant.  He was later appointed 1^st Sergeant and then elected 3^rd Lieutenant.  He was killed at Todd’s Tavern, which was part of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on May 7^th, 1864.  Thomas is buried at the Old Baptist Annex Cemetery in Glade Spring, which is located in Washington County, Virginia.

 

            The Washington Mounted Rifles also included as a member, John S. Mosby, before he went on to everlasting fame.  When the War broke out, Mosby was a lawyer in Bristol, twenty miles west of Abingdon, Virginia, which was the County Seat.  The Court House being in Abingdon, Mosby did much of his business there.  One of his classmates from when they both attended the University of Virginia asked Mosby to join the Washington Mounted Rifles, which he did.  Mosby was a private from May 1861 until February 1862, when he was appointed Adjutant of the Regiment.  In Mosby’s “Memoirs”, page 22, he writes “My first night in camp [as a private] I was detailed as one of the camp guards.  Sergeant Tom Edmondson - a gallant soldier who was killed in June 1864- gave me the countersign and instructed me as to the duties of a sentinel.”