General George Henry Thomas:

Born in Virginia in 1816, George Thomas graduated from West Point in 1840 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the artillery. He served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican War, and in 1854 took command at Fort Yuma, California. When the Civil War broke out, Thomas was one of only four Virginian officers to side with the Union, and he gained fame as the "Rock of Chickamauga" and emerged from the war as a major general. He took command of the Division of the Pacific in 1869, and died in California in 1870.