Author: McCabe, John Collins
Biography:
MCCABE, John Collins (1810-75: Hollis)
The son of Jane (Collins) and William McCabe, he was born in Richmond VA. He enjoyed literature, contributed to local periodicals, and developed a friendship with Edgar Allan Poe while the latter was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. After short spells in banking and law, he settled on the episcopal church and was ordained in 1848. He served as the minister of parishes in Virginia and Maryland until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he joined the confederate forces as a chaplain and later as chaplain-general of the Confederate military prisons (holding Federal soldiers) in Richmond. After the War he served parishes in Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. He was a lifelong Freemason; in his later years, he made collections for the church history of Virginia. The College of William and Mary gave him an honorary DD in 1859. He married three times (Emily Hardaway, Eliza Sophia [Gordon] Smith, and Marie V. Deford) and had at least four children from the first and second marriages. He died in Chambersburg PA but is buried in Richmond VA. (DAB; Knight; ancestry.com 2 Dec. 2019) HJ