SUMMARY
Carter M. Braxton was a civil engineer, businessman, and a Confederate artillery officer during the American Civil War (1861–1865). A Norfolk native, he fought in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia‘s major campaigns, from the Seven Days’ Battles outside Richmond in 1862 to the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863 and the Overland Campaign in 1864. One account claimed that he had seven horses shot from under him, but he was never wounded in the fighting. Following the war, he published a map of the battlefield at Fredericksburg. In June 1866 Braxton became president of the Fredericksburg and Gordonsville Railroad, and later formed his own engineering construction firm, Braxton, Chandler, and Marye, in Newport News. Braxton also founded a railway company and was vice president of both a bank and a gas company. He died of Bright’s disease in Newport News in 1898.