David Hunter Strother

David Hunter Strother (September 26, 1816 – March 8, 1888) was an American journalist, artist, brevet Brigadier General, innkeeper, politician and diplomat from West Virginia. Both before and after the American Civil War (in which he was initially a war correspondent), Strother was a successful 19th-century American magazine illustrator and writer, popularly known by his pseudonym, "Porte Crayon" (French, porte-crayon: "pencil/crayon holder"). He helped his father operate a 400-guest hotel at Berkeley Springs, which was at the time the only spa accessible by rail in the mid-Atlantic states. A Union topographer and nominal cavalry commander during the war, Strother rose to the rank of brevet Brigadier General of Volunteers, and afterward restructured the Virginia Military Institute, as well as serving as U.S. consul in Mexico (1879–1885). Early and family life Born in Martinsburg, Berkeley County, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1816 to colonel John Strother and his wife Elizabeth Pendleton Hunter, David Strother was the first of their eight children and the only male to reach adulthood. Both sides of his family (especially his mother's) were among the First Families of Virginia and included prominent political and military leaders even before successful participation in the American Revolutionary War. His grandfather fought in the navy then army during that conflict before moving to Berkeley County, and his father was a lieutenant in the War of 1812, then led the Berkeley County militia as well as served as ran a hotel and served as first assistant clerk to his father-in-law (then clerk of the county's circuit court) and eventually county clerk, all for many years (although at least once defeated by Democrat Harrison Waite). His mother attended the local Presbyterian church and his father the local Episcopal church; as an adult Strother lost interest in sectarian religion. Over his father's objection, 32-year-old David Strother married 19-year-old Anne Doyne Wolfe, daughter of a Martinsburg saddler in 1849, and the following year they had a daughter, Emily, who survived to adulthood and became the wife of John Brisben Walker. On May 6, 1861, he married, Mary Elliott (1832–1914) in Jefferson County who bore sons David Hunter Strother Jr. (1866–1871) and John Strother (1868–1923). As many as six of his children may have died young, per tombstones.