Findlay, Francis Smith

Findlay graduated with Dickinson's Class of 1857 and became an architect in Abingdon, Virginia where he had been born. He was probably the Frank S. Findlay who commanded a Confederate cavalry company from Washington County in the 4th Virginia regiment.
Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1857
    Full name
    Francis Smith Findlay
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    South
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Spouses
    2
    Family
    Julia A. Gardner (first wife), Bessie G. Paine (second wife)
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    Occupation
    Attorney or Judge
    Other
    Other Occupation
    Architect
    Military
    Confederate Army

    Francis Smith Findlay (Dickinson Chronicles)

    Scholarship
    Francis Smith Findlay, known universally and in some official records as "Frank," was born in Abingdon, in Washington County, Virginia on June 9, 1834. He was the son of a moderately wealthy Irish immigrant farmer named Alexander Findlay and his Virginian born wife, Catherine Ann Spiller Findlay. He was schooled locally, worked as a clerk for a merchant in Abingdon and then prepared for college at the Abingdon Academy. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the fall of 1853 with the class of 1857. He was a popular and lively student, a close friend of Horatio Collins King of his class, and a fellow founder member of the controversial Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity chapter at the College. He was also elected to the Union Philosophical Society. He graduated with his class in the early summer of 1857, returned to Abingdon and took up the study of law.

    During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate forces, gaining a commission as captain and raising a cavalry company locally in Washington County for the 4th Regiment of the Virginia Line in 1862. He commanded the company in the fighting around Prestonburg, Kentucky in December 1862 and was wounded there. Following the war, he returned to Abingdon to practice law, work as an architect, and serve as an agent for the railroad.

    He had married Julia A. Gardner in October 1866 and the couple had two sons, Charles and Alexander, before Julia died in 1877. Findlay remarried in October 1880 to Bessie G. Paine of Richmond, Virginia. Frank Smith Findlay died at his home in Abingdon on September 5, 1905. He was seventy one years old.
    John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., “Francis Smith Findlay,” Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/f/ed_findlayFS.htm.
    How to Cite This Page: "Findlay, Francis Smith," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5656.