Benjamin Azariah Colonna (17 October 1843-11 March 1924) was an American teacher and Confederate veteran of the American Civil War who fought at the 1864 Battle of New Market while a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute.
Biography[]
Benjamin Colonna was born in Accomac, Accomack County, Virginia in 1843, one of eight children born to a middle-class Eastern Shore family. As he was the most academically gifted of his siblings, Benjamin was the only one sent off to college, enrolling at the Virginia Military Institute in 1860 at the age of 16 and being taught by Stonewall Jackson. In May 1864, he was among the 250 VMI cadets who fought for the Confederacy at the Battle of New Market, and he joined the Confederate States Army on his graduation in June 1864. His half-brother John Thomas Colonna was captured and shot by the Union Army as a suspected spy. After the war, Colonna became a schoolteacher and surveyor, and he made a $1,800 loan to his brother to help start a shipyard in Norfolk. He died in 1924.