James Alexander Ventress Pue (1841-1919)

J. A. V. Pue was born in Howard County, Maryland to Arthur and Sallie Dorsey Pue on July 20, 1841. He prepared for his undergraduate career at the Dickinson Grammar School and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1855 with the class of 1859. He was elected as a member of the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class in the early summer of 1859.

Pue studied law, but with the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined his militia cavalry unit when it rode south in May 14, 1861 and enlisted in the Confederate Army as the First Maryland Cavalry. The following day, Pue was elected as third lieutenant of Company A and was promoted to second lieutenant a year later. He was wounded at Greenland Gap, Virginia in April 1863, but this did not prevent him from joining the invasion of Pennsylvania in June. The First Maryland was attached to Fitzhugh Lee's Brigade at the time, and Pue almost certainly would have returned to Carlisle and the grounds of Dickinson College during Lee's late June occupation of the town. Pue was captured on August 7, 1864, probably at Moorefield, West Virginia, when the First was taken by surprise and suffered very heavy casualties. Following the end of the war, he moved to Bandera County, Texas with several members of his family, where he practiced law and entered the farming and stock-raising business. He also served as judge of the Bandera County Court.

In April 1882, Pue married Jennie Carpenter of Bandera, and the couple had six children. Judge J. A. V. Pue died at his home in Bandera in 1919. He was seventy-eight years old.