Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

2836 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANSat the age of forty-five years. She is the mother of nine children, all living,as follows: Jefferson R., of this notice; Mrs. J. H. Bennett, of Barnesville,Georgia; Mrs. J. J. Jordan, of Sunnybrook, Georgia; William T., engagedin the insurance business at Statesboro, Georgia; and John H., Albert S.,Kathleen, Wilber E. and Hallie, all residents of Statesboro, with their mother.As a boy Jefferson R. Roach worked on the home farm and attended therural schools of Bulloch County, but a career as an agriculturist did notappeal to him, and he determined to secure further educational advantagesto fit himself for one of the professions. Accordingly, at the age of sixteenyears he became self-supporting, left his home, and entered the State NormalSchool, at Athens. There, in order to gain the means of livelihood and histuition expenses, he worked at any honorable employment, and as a studiousscholar duly finished his course. He next taught in the rural schools ofBulloch County for three terms, and through strict economy saved the meanswith which to further pursue his studies. He was graduated in law fromCumberland University, in the class of 1911, following which he went toJacksonville, Florida, and took a position keeping books. Six months laterhe entered the Atlanta Law School, where he completed his legal training andwas given his degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1912. Thus thoroughly equipped,in the fall of that year Mr. Roach came to Statesboro, opened an office, andembarked upon a career that has already been marked by satisfying achievements. He has a large and representative practice in all the courts, and hissuccess in a number of complicated and important cases augurs well for hisfuture. -A democrat in politics, in 1915 he was chosen by his party as thenominee for solicitor of the City Court. Mr. Roach's fraternal connectionis with the local lodge of the Masonic order.On November 12, 1912, at Norwood, Georgia, Mr. Roach was married toMiss Myrtle Dyer, daughter of B. C. Dyer, of that place, and to this unionthere has come one child, Fleming Dyer, born in September, 1913, at Statesboro, Georgia.BRIG.-GEN. HUGH W. MERCER, one of the Georgia heroes of the Warbetween the States, was a grandson of Gen. Hugh Mercer, of Virginia, whodied upon the battlefield of Princeton in the Revolutionary war. The secondGen. Hugh Mercer was born in Virginia in 1808. He entered the MilitaryAcademy at West Point in 1824, and was graduated in 1828 as a second lieutenant of artillery. During the following seven years he served in the regulararmy at different posts in the South, resigning from the service in 1835. Hethen entered the banking business and was so successfial that by 1841 he hadattained to the position of cashier of the Planters Bank, which position heheld until the secession of Georgia in 1861. On the outbreak of the war heentered the Confederate service as colonel of the First Georgia VolunteerInfantry, and on October 29, 1861, was promoted brigadier-general. Mercer'sBrigade won distinction in Tennessee under Kirby Smith, around Marietta,at Kenesaw Mountain and at Savannah, under Hardee. After the war here-engaged in banking at that place and in 1869 moved to Baltimore, wherehe was a commission merchant until 1872. He died at Baden-Baden, Bavaria,whither he had gone to regain his health, June 9, 1877.DR. T. 0. POWELL was a Virginian, born in Brunswick County, March 21,1837, and as superintendent of the Georgia Lunatic Asylum for nearly thirtyyears, and as an author and investigator, attained a national reputation asan expert on the treatment of mental defectives. In 1859 he graduated fromthe Medical College, in Atlanta, spent the early period of the war in militarysurgical work around Richmond and in the summer of 1862 was electedassistant physician of the Georgia Lunatic Asylum, as the State Sanitoriumwas then called. When Dr. Thomas F. Green, the superintendent, died in