McPherson, Samuel McClung

Samuel M. McPherson was born on October 11, 1837 at Lewisburg, Virginia, now West Virginia, to state legislator and Virginia militia officer Colonel Joel McPherson and his wife Amanda McClung McPherson. He was the fourth child of eight. McPherson entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was elected to the Union Philosophical Society there, and graduated with his class in the early summer of 1858.

McPherson studied medicine in Philadelphia and earned his medical degree. Early in the Civil War he became surgeon of the Fifty-ninth Virginia Infantry and a well-known and respected medical officer under General Henry A. Wise.

On June 14, 1863, Samuel McClung McPherson died in the service of the Confederate States near Richmond, Virginia. He was twenty-five years old.