George Lamb
A free black in Northern Virginia, George Lamb was born in Fairfax County in 1834 to Harriett Lamb and a father who has been forgotten in history. He joined the locally organized Fairfax Rifles which became Co. D of the 17th Virginia. Originally the servant to the company commander, Captain William H. Dulany, Lamb continued with the outfit when Dulany, severely injured at Blackburn Ford at First Manassas, left. After the war, Lamb worked for several local farmers as well as in the blacksmith shop of Joseph Cooper in downtown Fairfax. He is one of only six Fairfax County freedmen who served in the Confederacy and may have been the only one receiving a CSA pension at the time of his death at the age of 93.
The Register of Free Blacks
Within two decades of revolutionary rhetoric proclaiming "All men are created equal", there were a growing number of freed men in Virginia by the 1790s. They were a combination of former slaves freed in their master's wills or freemen born of free parents. With more and more freedmen living in towns (few owned any substantial land as farmers), the white Virginians had grown uncomfortable with the prospect of freedmen "tainting" the minds of the slaves in the area and/or assisting with their escapes. So in 1793, Virginia legislature created a law requiring free African Americans to register yearly with the courts. In actuality, the "annual" part was seldom enforced. But you had to register once since it really helped to have with you the affidavit showing your free status!! By the 1850s, there were many free blacks in Northern Virginia and George Lamb shows up on the registry in 1855. (The Clerk of the Court, Alfred Moss who affirmed Lamb' free status used to live in what's now Green Spring farm in Annandale- home of GC2144- "Gardener's Dream cache".)
The Fairfax Rifles
Formed a year before the outbreak of the war, Lamb's unit joined nine other locally formed companies to become the 17th Virginia Infantry regiment which fought mostly under General James Longstreet. Major campaigns that Lamb probably fought in include 1st Bull Run (1861), the Seven Days battle of the Peninsula Campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Saylor's Creek and Appomattox (1865). Quite a long list of extensive and bloody battles.