I also found an obituary that appears in the Confederate Veteran magazine that I believe was written by a brother of Col. Vandeventer- T.J. Vandeventer of Memphis, Texas. I saw where a Thomas J. Vandeventer served in the 25th Virginia Cavalry. It appears to me that the article by Edward Vandeventer and this obituary were the sources used for the SCV article. There is a link below to the obituary which you can find by scrolling down about 1/4 of the page.
Allan
Here is the beginning of the article where Edward writes about some of his father's Civil War experiences:
"The shocks were worse than any youth -- unseasoned to life's cruelties -- should be forced to bear. That heartbreaking period just before and during the battle of Chancellorsville.
My father, Alexander Spotwood Vandeventer, was a youth who had to bear those shocks. He was there as the youngest Colonel in the army of the Confederacy. (My research has failed to find the name of a Colonel on either side in the Civil War so young as he was.)
The prelude to Chancellorsville was the fierce fighting among the trees, called the Wilderness. As every detail of the Chancellorsville engagement was studied by military experts of all civilized nations, it would have rated an opera by Wagner. He would have composed the Wilderness as the overture.
As musket fire ceased and nature's forest noises took over, my father walked among the trees. He saw many of his young comrades staring into space with sightless eyes. He had hunted, fished, played games with them. He had gone to school with many of these boys who never would attend another earthly school. Then twilight spread its mantle over the gory scene. As though a great conductor had raised his baton, signaling the chorus to begin singing, hundreds of whippoorwills started their mournful chant.
To my young father, this seemed a requiem for his dead comrades. He never could forget the funereal effect of that music on his aching heart. (When my father was practicing law in Fayetteville, while I was a boy, and while this was just a pretty little country town, whippoorwills serenaded every summer evening near our home. My father shuddered every time he heard them. Their melancholy sounds were a funeral dirge, making vivid the memory of his fallen pals in the Wilderness. Such were the mental scars left by the struggle of the 1860s.)
One grief followed another in the Wilderness. My father had been in conference with General Stonewall Jackson one hour before the latter was mortally wounded. As Jackson was his idol, this tragedy was a heavy burden on a heart already bowed down by the sadness of the Wilderness. After Jackson had conferred with his generals and colonels in his Corps, he had ridden out on a scouting tour to prepare the next day's fighting. Carolina troops, mistaking him for a "Fed", shot and mortally wounded him. His beloved horse, Little Sorrel, strayed into enemy lines. Union soldiers delivered Little Sorrel to the Confederates, so great was their respect and admiration for Stonewall Jackson.
The next day my father had to lead his regiment into the slaughter pen called Chancellorsville! On the second day of that frightful engagement, the general commanding the brigade to which my father was assigned was killed in action. The ranking colonel took his place. He lived only a brief spell. The next ranking colonel was appointed commander of the brigade. Soon, he too was killed. General Robert E. Lee then appointed my father a brevet brigadier-general. He was 22 years of age! After the Confederate victory, General Lee issued a citation for "extraordinary valor" in my father's name.
Born November 9, 1840 near Jonesville, Lee County, Va., my father was a student at the Tazewell Seminary, across the line in Tennessee, when the guns boomed at Fort Sumter.
He returned at once to his home and helped raise a company for the Confederacy. He officially entered the Army of Virginia on June 29, 1861. He was elected captain of Company B of the 50th Virginia Infantry regiment, CSA. He served in General Robert E. Lee's army every day of the war except for a brief period when he was a prisoner of war at Hilton Head, South Carolina. Released in an exchange of officers, he returned to his regiment and commanded it until Appomattox."