His father was a career U.S. Army officer, specializing in artillery, who had served in New Orleans during the War of 1812, and married in 1820 during his leave in Norfolk, Virginia.

His grandfather Thomas Lomax (1750-1835) served on the Caroline County Committee of Safety during the Revolutionary War and later in the Virginia House of Delegates.

[3] Assigned to the prestigious 2nd Cavalry regiment, Lomax fought on the frontier and served in Bleeding Kansas during the years immediately preceding the conflict.

[citation needed] Lomax resigned from the army in April 1861,[4] and shortly thereafter accepted a captain's commission in the Virginia state militia.

Appointed colonel of the 11th Virginia Cavalry[4] in time for the Gettysburg campaign, Lomax was promoted to brigadier general after the battle.

Lomax fought his brigade under the division command of his old classmate Fitzhugh Lee from Culpeper Courthouse through the Wilderness and around Petersburg.

He arrived in Richmond several days before Lomax left and Boyd proceeded on to Staunton where he was met by one of Winder's detectives by the name of Turner.

In February, after the capture of Boyd became known, the Linville Rangers were put under the command of Jake Cook but they were never officially recognized by the Confederate government and they were never paid.

Part of the opacity that surrounds Lomax's military career rests with him being the commanding officer of Mosby and the other partisan units in the Valley that brought information to General Lee and others.

In fact, Mosby told Caroline Harper, an acquaintance who had been raised in the same aristocratic circles of Old Virginia, the illegitimate daughter of a prominent politician, that he had not felt he could even give the interview until Lomax's death, in order to protect him, for they were the closest of friends, both during and after the war.

[2][5] He continued contact with Jubal Early, and months after the death of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis, vehemently objected to his daughter Winnie's proposed marriage to Alfred Wilkinson, a New Yorker whose father had been an abolitionist.