Joshua Fry Bullitt Jr.

As the leader of a citizen police force, he was the model for a character in one of the best-selling novels in the United States in the first half of the 20th century.

His first cousins included William Marshall Bullitt, who served as United States Solicitor General during the Taft administration and who refurbished the family's ancestral home, Oxmoor Farm.

He learned law from his father, and from former U.S. Attorney General James Speed, and by attending the summer lectures of Professor John B.

[14] The most famous case involving the Guard was the disappearance of Philadelphian E.L. Wentz, a member of the family that included the principal owners of Virginia Coal and Iron Company.

In 1904, when the missing body was discovered, Bullitt led his group of men into the woods to guard the remains of the victim, who had not been seen since the fall of the previous year.

[15] Bullitt represented the Wentz family at the coroner's inquest, at which the jury reached a surprise verdict that the cause of death was suicide and not homicide.

[16] Bullitt was also the commander of a National Guard unit, Company H of the 2nd Virginia Regiment, which was called to service in Mexico in 1916 and later in World War I.

[17] Bullitt concluded his career in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the owners of many of the coal companies in Wise County, Virginia were based.