James Benjamin Sclater, Jr. was born in Orange County, Virginia on July 19, 1847, the son of James Benjamin Sclater Sr. and Harriet (Wharton) Sclater. Sclater attended the Cabell School in the Virginia Piedmont for a time and, at the age of 17, entered the Virginia Military Institute in March 1864 when that institution had been moved from Lexington to Richmond. In April 1865, Sclater was paroled from the Cadet Battalion by order of Union Army officers after Lee's army had evacuated Richmond. Sclater then entered the University of Virginia where he remained for two years. Although he was later known to his friends as "Doc," he did not receive a degree in medicine at the University and never practiced that profession. He did, however, devote much of his time to his medical studies and is recorded as having done distinguished work. He lived in Room 43, West Range, which he shared with another Founder, Robertson Howard. For a time Sclater engaged in the drug business in Charlotte, North Carolina. He then settled in Richmond, Virginia and the director of that city lists him as a clerk, presumably in his father's general mercantile brockerage business, from 1870 until his untimely death in 1882 at the age of only 35. He is burried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.
