SAMUEL REEVES BANDY
     Samuel Reeves Bandy, manager of the sales department of the real estate and brokerage firm of John T. Trout, with offices in the First National Bank Building, Roanoke, Virginia, was born in Franklin County, Virginia, February 17th, 1879, and was one of seven children, there being four sons and three daughters. His parents were Stephen Polk and Martha N. (Hazlewood) Bandy.
     His father was a Confederate soldier and served through the Civil War in the 28th Virginia Regiment, and was slightly wounded in the battle ofGettysburg.
     Mr. Bandy, when a boy, attended the county schools of his native county, and won the Scholarship Medal, afterwards attended Roanoke College. He located in Roanoke at the age of eighteen years and began life as clerk at the Stratford Hotel: after nearly two years he accepted a position as assistant postmaster and general manager of a merchandise store at Lithia, Virginia, belonging to J. M. Thrasher & Company, after which time he accepted a position as cashier with the Pocahontas Coal & Coke Company, and was with this concern for three years and for several years he was a traveling salesman, his territory covering eight of the Southern states. He came back to Roanoke in 1909 and engaged in the real estate business, in which line of trade he has been very successful.  He is also a member of the Chamber of Commerce and is regarded as one of the city's most progressive young business men, his friends being numbered by the hundreds.
[History of Roanoke County by George S. Jack, Edward Boyle Jacobs; published 1915; Submitted to Genealogy Trails by Andrea Stawski Pack.]

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE BERKELEY 
     William Wilberforce Berkeley, the gentleman whose name captions this article, was born in King and Queen County, Virginia, in 1844, and is a son of William Henry Berkeley, a civil engineer and one of the first railroad engineers in the state of Virginia. The subject of this sketch was reared in his native county until he was seventeen years of age, when he entered the Confederate Army as a member of an independent company organized by General W. H. F. Lee, and called “Lee’s Virginia Rangers.” In August, 1861, the company was mustered into the regular army at Ashland, Virginia, and joined General Loring in western Virginia. Upon his return it was attached to the army of General Robert E. Lee, and served in the cavalry division until the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. Mr. Berkeley returned to his native county in 1865 and spent a year in study at a preparatory school at Aberdeen, after which he acted as a tutor in the family of Colonel Robert W. Hughes for four years.
     August 13th, in 1870, Mr. Berkeley was united in marriage to a daughter of Thomas Read and a granddaughter of Colonel William M. Peyton, who was one of the largest land owners in this section of the State. As a result of this union there were six children born, as follows: Mrs. Henry A. Smith, Mrs. Harry Boaz, Mrs. George H. Casky, Thomas Read, Beverley and Nelson Berkeley.
     Mr. Berkeley was admitted to the bar in Roanoke in 1883 and was one of the most successful practitioners in Southwest Virginia, and during his residence in this county since 1870 he has practiced with Robert E. Scott, Phlegar, and Johnson, and later with the late J. Ran Bryan. Mr. Berkeley has always been a Democrat and most active in the affairs of his party, serving as a member of the Virginia Legislature in 1895 and ’96. Captain Berkeley owns a beautiful farm, consisting of several hundred acres, three miles east of Roanoke, and in recent years has practically retired from the practice of law, preferring to spend his time at his palatial home, Glade Creek.
Transcribed by: Peggy Luce

HONORABLE A. M. BOWMAN
     Roanoke County's Representative in the Virginia House of Delegates-Honorable A. M. Bowman, is a resident of Salem, but a native of Rockingham County, where he was born January 11th, 1847. He received his education in the common schools and at New Market Academy.
In 1863, at the age of sixteen, he enlisted in Company H, Twelfth Regiment, Virginia Cavalry, and took part in the battles of Spottsylvania Courthouse, Yellow Tavern, and in the cavalry fights around Gettysburg, Petersburg, and Richmond. He was taken prisoner at Mount Crawford during Sheridan's raid through Virginia, in March, 1865, and sent to Fort Delaware, where he remained until after the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox.
     After the close of the war he returned to his native state to take up the battle of life in his beloved, though desolated, Southland. He began life after the war as a farmer and cattle raiser, and has made a specialty of raising registered Jersey stock, shipping fine cattle to all parts of the United States and Canada. He is owner and proprietor of the famous Bowmont Stock Farm. With an eye single to the best interests of Roanoke County, Colonel Bowman realized that fortunes awaited the people in the culture of fine fruit. He organized the Diamond Orchard Company, of Salem, of which he is President, and some twelve or thirteen years ago began the planting of the largest orchard of select apples and peaches in the State. This orchard comprises some forty-five thousand trees.
     Politically Colonel Bowman is a Democrat of the old school. For many years he was a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee, and has been an authorized delegate to every Gubernatorial Convention held by the party since 1873. He was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention which nominated Grover Cleveland for a second term for the presidency in 1888.
In the year 1901, Colonel Bowman was called upon to serve the people of Roanoke County, Roanoke City, and Craig County in the Virginia Legislature. Colonel Bowman has been successively reelected biennially since, running at all times ahead of his ticket. At the election held in November, 1909, he was elected without opposition from Roanoke County, the city of Roanoke, and Craig County having been apportioned into separate districts, and was again reelected in 1911. He has at all times held positions on important committees and has done much in the way of shaping the most important legislation of recent years in the State, and as Chairman of the Finance Committee, has served the State with signal ability.
     For many years he has been President of the Board of Trustees of Roanoke College, and has also been one of the controlling spirits in the Lutheran Orphan Home of Salem, being Vice President of the institution. He is a member and an elder in the College Lutheran Church of Salem, and has been a resident of the town for twenty years.
     Mr. Bowman has done a great deal for Salem.  He was one of the leading spirits in the advancement and material prosperity of the town in 1890, when on the twenty-seventh of January the Salem Development Company was organized with an authorized capital stock of $1,000,000. Colonel Bowman was selected as President of the Company, and it was under his wise management that many improvements of the most substantial kind were inaugurated among which was the construction of two magnificent iron bridges across Roanoke River at a cost of $18,000. This company also put in water works at a cost of nearly $10,000, and constructed some fifty odd dwellings. His company was instrumental in locating a number of important enterprises in the town, and while Salem suffered as all towns in the country suffered in the unparalleled depression which followed in a few years afterwards, the policy adopted by this company was such that to-day Salem is stronger and on a more solid basis than ever before in the town's history.
[History of Roanoke County by George S. Jack, Edward Boyle Jacobs; published 1915;
Submitted to Genealogy Trails by Andrea Stawski Pack.]

SAMUEL SELDEN BROOKE
Samuel Selden Brooke, the Clerk of the Corporation, and Law and Chancery Courts of Roanoke, Virginia, has served in that capacity for the past twenty-six years.
He is a native of Stafford County, Virginia.
In April 1861, when the Civil War broke out, Samuel Selden Brooke enlisted in the Stafford Guards, an infantry company organized at the time of the John Brown raid, and served as heavy artillery at Aquia Creek, in his native county, for a period of about one year. The company was then restored to the infantry and became Company I, 47th Virginia Infantry. He was elected Captain of his company, April, 1862, and served in that capacity, until the end of the War. In the early part of 1862 the regiment was assigned to the First Brigade of A. P. Hill's Division and soon afterwards was placed in the army corps of Stonewall Jackson.
He came to Roanoke in 1882, and engaged in the publication of a newspaper-"The Leader" being associated with Col. J. H. Dunstan, who was afterwards elected as first Mayor of Roanoke under its charter as a city. He continued his newspaper work until 1886, when he was appointed Clerk of the Hustings Court, which position he has filled most acceptably since, having been continuously reelected as a Democrat at every election in which that office was involved since his first appointment.
In 1889 he organized and became Captain of the Roanoke Light Infantry and later was elected Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Virginia Regiment of Infantry. 
In 1891 he organized the William Watts Camp of Confederate Veterans and was its first Commander.
In 1908 he was elected Grand Commander of the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans of Virginia.
Religiously Captain Brooke is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church.  Fraternally he is a member of the Masonic Order, I. O. O. F., K. of P., Red Men, Elks, A. O. K. of M. C., and Society of the Cincinnati.
In the early history of Roanoke he was actively identified with the Volunteer Fire Department, being a member of Junior Hose Company No. 2, and for several years President of the Board of Trade and is at present a director of the Chamber of Commerce of this city.  He is an exceedingly popular officer of this city and is well known throughout this section of the State, and his friends are legion among all classes.
History of Roanoke County by George S. Jack, Edward Boyle Jacobs; published 1915;
Submitted to Genealogy Trails by Andrea Stawski Pack.