Acting as a volunteer scout for Colonel Hunton, that day of the Ball's Bluff Battle was a young trooper of Ashby's Cavalry who, migrating from Maryland to Loudoun in 1857, purchased a farm on the shore of the Potomac and became very much of a Virginian. Elijah Viers White was born in Poolesville, Maryland, in 1832, attended Lima Seminary in Livingston County, New York, and later spent two years at Granville College in Licking County, Ohio. With the restlessness of his age he went to Kansas in 1855 and, as a member of a Missouri company, had some part in the factional fighting then distracting that territory. At the time of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry he served as a corporal in the Loudoun Cavalry and soon after the outbreak of the war was transferred to Ashby's Legion. By December, 1861, he was a captain, reporting to General Hill, and in charge of a line of couriers between Leesburg and Winchester. During the winter of 1861-'62 this force was quartered in Waterford and, somewhat augmented in numbers, was assigned to scouting and guarding the Potomac shore. Thus originated the unit which became so famous in Loudoun's history--the 35th Virginia Cavalry[157] or, as it was more generally known, "White's Battalion"--the "Comanches" affectionately held in local memory. Although having but about twenty-five men when wintering in Waterford, the organization increased with such rapidity that before the war's end its rolls, according to Captain Frank M. Myers, its historian, bore nearly 700 names. On the 28th October, 1862, it was formally mustered into the Confederate service by Colonel Bradley T. Johnson of General J. E. B. Stuart's staff. In its inception formed for scouting, raiding and other local duty, and regarded as an independent organization, it was fated in January, 1863, to become a part of Brigadier General William E. Jones' Brigade and thenceforward continued a part of the regular military establishment of the Confederacy. [157] Myers' _Comanches_, p. 314.