James Benjamin Sclater, Jr.
Another V.M.I. cadet was James Benjamin Sclater, Jr. Sclater was born in Orange County, Virginia, on July 19, 1847, the son of James Benjamin and Harriet (Wharton) Sclater. Soon after his birth, his father moved to Richmond, where for many years, he was in the general mercantile brokerage business. The son attended for a time the Cabell School in the Virginia Piedmont. In March 1864, at the age of seventeen, he entered the Virginia Military Institute when that institution had been moved from Lexington to Richmond, where the cadets were in active war service in the defense of Richmond. In April 1865, Sclater was paroled from the Cadet Battalion by order of Union Army officers, after Lee's army had evacuated Richmond.
Sclater entered the University of Virginia, where he remained for two years. Although he was later known to his friends as "Doc," he did not receive a degree in medicine at the University and never practiced that profession. He did, however, devote much of his time to his medical studies and is recorded as having done distinguished work. He lived in Room 43, which he shared with another Founder, Robertson Howard. For a time he engaged in the drug business in Charlotte, North Carolina. He then settled in Richmond and the directory of that city lists him as a clerk, presumably in his father's business, from 1870 until his death in 1882.
During these years he was undoubtedly in declining health and his untimely death occurred at the age of thirty-five. He was never married but left behind a sweetheart who continued loyal through the years that followed. Sclater was survived by no near relatives except his father, whose name he bore and who died seven years after his son, while the Hampden-Sydney Convention of Pi Kappa Alpha was in session refounding Pi Kappa Alpha. Sclater lies in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia, on a beautiful knoll overlooking the James River. His grave was for a long time marked only by an ornamental urn placed there by his sweetheart.
Reprinted from The Oak: A History of Pi Kappa Alpha.
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