General Leslie Combs (1793-1881) is descended, on the side of his mother, whose maiden name was Sarah Richardson, from a respectable Quaker family of Maryland, connected by blood with the Thomases and Snowdens. His father was by birth a Virginian, and served as a subaltern officer in the revolutionary army under Washington, at the siege of Yorktown and capture of Lord Cornwallis.
Young Leslie Combs had just passed his eighteenth birthday, and was, by law, subject to militia duty, although he had not been inscribed on any muster-roll.
Equipping himself as a private of cavalry as speedily as possible, about a month after the army marched from Georgetown, Kentucky, he started alone on their track, hoping to overtake them in time to partake of their glorious triumphs in Canada, for, like the rest, he never dreamed of disaster and defeat.
Having risen from the ranks to the office of captain in two campaigns, without the aid of friends or fortune, by repeated acts of self-devotion, Leslie Combs had returned home naked and penniless, a cripple for life.
The Combs family.
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