Captain Stockton Heth

Captain Stockton Heth was Beverley Stockton Heth, a Virginia-born Confederate officer who later emerged as a planter, stock-raiser, banker, and landholder with influence in Radford and Montgomery County, Virginia. He was born on 5 April 1839 in Richmond; his parents were John Heth and Margaret Pickett, and he spent part of his upbringing in Culpeper County after their early deaths. He studied at Episcopal High School in Alexandria and at the Virginia Military Institute. In wartime, he is clearly documented as serving on Major General Henry Heth’s staff; the Gettysburg official report specifically names “[Stockton] Heth” as one of Henry Heth’s aides-de-camp. After the war, he and his wife Isabella Hammet became important landholders in the Radford area, where official historic-district documentation ties them to land donations for Belle Heth Academy, a Masonic lodge site, and the former “Heth’s Grove,” later used for the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Radford, the institutional ancestor of Radford University.