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Meet Thomas Robinson Sharp.

You might not recognize the name. It doesn’t carry the weight of say, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. But Sharp, who after the Civil War settled in what is today Eden, also made an impact during the war.

Sharp’s role in what has been called “The Great Train Raid of 1861” will be the topic of a daylong Civil War symposium on June 25 . The registration deadline is June 11.

“Sharp is an obscure individual, but to me, he’s larger than life,” said Arthur Candenquist. a former Amtrak manager from Virginia who has been studying Civil War history since 1956.

“The more I started to read about this guy, the more fascinated I became,” he said. “That’s how I’ve gotten to be really intimately involved with Capt. Sharp.”

He hopes to finish a biography of Sharp next year. Some of what he’s learned, including about Sharp’s burial in Eden, came from Melissa Whitten and Julie Hampton Ganis of the Eden Preservation Society. The group helped put together the symposium.

Candenquist will be dressed as Sharp for the symposium. He plans to present two slide shows of Sharp’s life — the raid and the building of the Centreville Railroad, the first railroad built for military purposes in the U.S., he said.

Last weekend he took part in a reenactment of part of the raid, in which Sharp helped haul locomotives and railcars overland to Strasburg, Va., after their route by rail was cut off by the Union.

A driven young man who grew up in a railroad family, Sharp, at age 19. eschewed his father’s plans for him — a career in civil engineering — to follow in his father’s footsteps as a railroad man.

By age 27. as tensions escalated into war between the states, Sharp had already worked in high-level positions at five railroads.

So when the Confederate army required someone to help engineer the transportation of needed railroad equipment in 1861, it turned to Sharp.

Some historians disagree over the scope of the theft and what some describe as a massive destruction of railroad property.

But there’s no doubt that Sharp, a Confederate captain from Pennsylvania who later lived in what is now Eden, helped the South build its railroad system with cars and locomotives stolen from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

The 1861 raid — also attributed to Stonewall Jackson — impressed John Garrett. president of the B&O, according to historian Gary L. Browne.

“He admired how Confederate colonel Thomas R. Sharpe. with just thirty-five men comprising six machinists, ten teamsters, and twelve laborers had moved fourteen of his big locomotives — including a Hayes Camel 198, a Mason locomotive, and a “dutch wagon” — over forty miles of dirt roads from Martinsburg to Strasburg, Virginia,” Browne wrote.

Confederate forces raided B&O property 143 times during the course of the war, according to Browne.

In 1861 alone, the railroad lost 42 locomotives and 386 cars, which were stolen or destroyed, the historian wrote.

During the war, Sharp became the Confederacy’s military road superintendent, helping to create what would become the Centreville Railroad, the first Confederate government railroad. He was stationed at times in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Columbia, S.C., according to historical records.

Apparently, the B&O forgave Sharp for his role in stripping the railroad of materials during the war. After the war, the B&O hired Sharp as master of transportation.

Well after the Civil War ended, Sharp moved to what was then the Draper section of Eden in about 1879.

He bought more than 1,400 acres, built Edgewood Plantation and developed a hamlet that was named after him.

Sharp continued working in the railroad business, including serving as president of the Danville, Mocksville & Southwestern Railroad Co.

He died in 1909 and is buried in Lawson Cemetery in Eden. His wife, daughter and father-in-law are buried at Church of the Epiphany in Eden.