USA > Alabama > Memorial record of Alabama. A concise account of the state's political, military, professional and industrial progress, together with the personal memoirs of many of its people. Volume I > Part 60
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surgeon in the army of Atlanta, and after the fall of the latter place, was left to watch the movements of Sherman; some time later he was sent to South Caorlina, and was at Statesburg at the time of the final surrender. He was never captured nor wounded, nor ever away from his post of duty, excepting on one occasion, when he was at home a short time, on a furlough; all his brothers, however, were wounded, so that. there was plenty of the Blue blood shed in the Confederate cause. After the war, the doctor passed a year in practice at his old home in Pike county, and then, in 1867, located at Inverness, where he engaged in merchandising with a brother, and also practiced medicine, until 1871, when he settled in Union Springs, where he has since devoted his atten- tion exclusively to his business as a merchant, being now one of the most extensive traders in the county. The doctor is also a stockholder in the Union Springs cotton mill, and with brother, Hector, is engaged in merchandising at Omega. He also is occupied extensively in planting. The doctor was united in marriage, in 1869, with Miss Sarah A., daughter of Robert Boyd, who came from Georgia to Alabama and died in this state in 1886. The doctor had the misfortune to lose his wife in 1889. She was a native of this state, was a Prsebyterian for many years, and was the mother of five children; two are dead and three living: Ernest L., a rising young lawyer of Union Springs, who graduated at Clarks- ville, Tenn., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., and before he was twenty-one years old he was appointed receiver; the second child is Hector P., and the third is Mary M. The doctor is a self-made man, as he started his busi- ness life with almost nothing, and what he now has is the result of his own effort and business talent. His example is certainly worthy the emulation of the youth of the entire state.
LOUIS BODENHEIMER, a resident of Montgomery, Ala., but a merchant at Fitzpatrick's, is a native of Bavaria, Germany, was born in 1848, and is a son of Isaac and Sarah (Schorff) Bodenheimer, who emigrated from . the land of their birth in 1854, and settled in New York city, where the father was engaged in the live stock trade until his death. His widow is now a resident of St. Louis. Louis Bodenheimer is one of a family of twelve children and was educated in New York city. At the age of sixteen he began his business life as clerk in the same city, but a year later, in 1865, came south and passed two years in Louisiana, then clerked in Montgomery, Ala., until 1869, when he embarked in business on his own account at Fitzpatrick's, where his urbanity and general busi- ness talents have won for him a large circle of acquaintances and custo- mers. In addition to merchandising, he does quite an extensive cotton commission business, as well as giving some attention to planting. He furnishes supplies for about 2,500 acres of cotton plantation land for some of the leading business men of the county, beside, supplying his own plantation of 500 acres, handling in all about 1,000 bales per annum. Mr. Bodenheimer is popular as a secret society man, being a member
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of Montgomery lodge, No. 11, F. & A. M., of the K. of P., of Daniel Rice lodge. K. of H., and the National union-all of Montgomery. For some years he was postmaster at Fitzpatrick's, and still holds the con- fidence of the entire community. He was happily married, in 1872, to Miss Rosa Gerson, a native of Montgomery. Her father was M. L. Ger- son, who, with his wife, was a native of Germany and at one time a pros- perous merchant of Montgomery, Ala.
DR. RICHARD LEMUEL BUTT, the talented physician and surgeon at Midway, Bullock county, Ala., was born in Columbia county, Ga., Novem- ber 1, 1824, a son of Moses and Priscilla (Banks) Butt-the former a native of Halifax county, N. C., born September 23, 1782, and the latter born September 20, 1802, in Elbert county, Ga. Moses Butt was reared a planter, was six feet high, well proportioned, very strong and active as an acrobat. At the age of eighteen he left his native county with his parents for the state of Georgia, but on the way his father died in camp in the state of South Carolina. Moses, however, continued on his way, accompanied by his widowed mother, and settled in Columbia county, Ga., where he married, in 1822, acquired a fortune of $200,000, and died in his sixty-seventh year. He had attended school only six months in his life. He was scrupulously honest, industrious and genial; was de- voted to his family, was devout, and a leader in church and social circles. He was a captain in the Florida war of 1836, but never sought public office or any sort of notoriety. His second wife, Miss Banks, died Febru- ary 23, 1855. She was a daughter of Ralph Banks, a distinguished native of Georgia. Mr. Banks was a gentleman of noble qualities and exemplary habits, and an example of the highest type of christian man- hood. He married Mary Jones, a lady of exceptionally fine attainments, and to their union were born nine sons and four daughters, all noted for their honesty and virtue. Moses Butt, grandfather of Dr. Richard L., was a native of Wales and came to America about the year 1752, in com- pany with five brothers, and settled on Tar river, N. C., where he suc- cessfully engaged in planting, but determined to seek more fertile coun- try, and was on his way to Georgia when he was overtaken by death, as before related, while camping in South Carolina. He was an Episco- palian and a sincere christian. Dr. Richard Lemuel Butt is one of a fam- ily of five sons and three daughters, of whom his twin-brother, John H., died in 1883-a merchant and planter. The doctor received his liter- ary education at Wynnton academy and graduated in medicine from the university of the city of New York, March 11, 1846. He at once began practicing at Columbus, Ga., and July 29, of the same year, married Miss Eliza C. Leonard, who was- born in Morgan county, Ga., and who died in Memphis, Tenn., November 15, 1861, leaving six children, three of whom still survive, viz .: Frances P., wife of C. S. Tucker of Thayer, Mo .; Mary Virginia, widow of the late Michael Wood, of Las Vegas, N. M., and Richard L., Jr., a conductor on the Alabama Midland railroad.
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The second marriage of Dr. Butt was with Mrs. Martha J. Gamsnell, daughter of James Jackson and cousin of the famous Stonewall Jackson. This lady died August 12, 1870, and for his third wife the doctor selected, November 22, 1876, Mrs. Mary E. Henderson, daughter of Will- iam Moss, a native of New York, and his wife Polly Beecher, who was born in Connecticut and was a relative of the cultivated divine, Henry Ward Beecher. William Moss moved from New York to Georgia, about the year 1819, by wagon, and settled in Elbert county, where he was engaged in planting and merchandising until his death, October 28, 1850, and in Elbert county was Mrs. Butt born and educated. Dr. Butt prac- ticed at Columbus, Ga., three years, then for three years at Talbotton, Ga., and in 1853 removed to Midway, Ala., where he followed his profes- sion until 1858, when he went to Memphis, Tenn. While in that city the war came on, and April 19, 1861, he was appointed surgeon in Gen. William Hicks Jackson's staff, but was later transferred to Gen. Van Dorn's staff, with whom he remained until the latter's death, March 10, 1862; he was then appointed to Gen. Forrest's staff, but by his own request was restored to the staff of Gen. Jackson. This position he held until the latter part of 1864, when, by request of his wife, he was appointed to hospital duty at Columbus, Ga., where, April 19, 1865, he surrendered to Gen. Wilson. He then resumed practice at Memphis, but in July, 1875, returned to Midway, where he is regarded as one of the most competent practitioners of the county, and peerless as a sur- geon. He is devoted to his profession and has made specialties of sur- gery and obstetrics, some of his operations in both having been wonder- fully sucucessful. He stands high in the estimation of his fellow-practi- tioners and is a member of the National and State Medical associations, and was once president of the Bullock county Medical society. He is de- voted to his family and is an ardent member of the Methodist church, while his wife is a devout Baptist.
DR. GROVES CALDWELL, one of the oldest practitioners of Bullock county, Ala., and a resident of Midway, was born in Greene county, Ga., in 1825, a son of Joshua and Charlotte (Beasley) Caldwell, natives, re- spectively , of Maryland and Georgia. Joshua Caldwell was a youth when he went with his father from Maryland to Georgia, where he became a mechanic, married, then went to planting, and made a fortune. He passed the last years of his life in Macon county, Ga , and died about 1868. . He had been twice married, his first wife, the mother of Groves Caldwell, having died when the latter was about ten years of age. John Caldwell, the father of Joshua, was an American by nativity, but of Scotch parentage; he located in Georgia about 1836, but later came to Alabama and here died, having followed planting all his life. Dr. Groves Caldwell was the third born in a family of four sons and four daughters. He was educated at Oak Bowery academy in Chambers county, Ala., and at La Grange, Ga., and read medicine at La Fayette, Ala., with Drs. Hud-
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son and Bacon one year. He then went to Philadelphia, and at the Penn- sylvania university was under the private tutorage of Dr. William H. Hoener, then professor of anatomy. Graduating in 1845, he practiced at Oak Bowery until 1849, when he removed to Barbour county, Ala., where he practiced and farmed for a few years, and then removed to Enon, where he continued practicing and farming until 1881, since which time he has lived at Midway, where he has secured a large practice and is still engaged in planting to a limited extent. In 1845 he married Mary Ann Flournoy, who was born in Sandersville, Ga., and who died in 1889, the mother of seven children, of whom five are living, viz. : Mary A., Clarence P., a planter, Lula, Anna, and Roberta. Early in 1862, Dr. Caldwell raised a company of volunteers in Macon and Barbour counties, of which he was commissioned captain. This company was at- tached to the Forty-fifth Alabama regiment at Auburn, Ala., and went to Tupelo, Miss., from thence with Bragg on his raid through Kentucky, their first engagement taking place at Perryville; they afterward went through Cumberland Gap, and on to Knoxville, Tenn .; fought at Chick- amauga, Missionary Ridge, and in all the battles from Dalton to Atlanta' and back with Hood, fighting at Spring Hill, Franklin and Nashville, retreating to Corinth, Miss. The regiment was soon afterward ordered to join Johnston in North Carolina; but on its reaching Hamburg, S. C., Capt. Caldwell was sent back to Columbus, Ga., for recruits, and on his way back again to his command with his new men he heard, when near Hamburg, the news of the surrender, and immediately started for home, reaching Eufaula just after the Federals had evacuated that town. The doctor, during his war service, was thrice wounded-in the thigh, in the breast, and in the shoulder. A brother of the doctor, named Joshua, now deceased, also lent his aid to his state as a soldier for a short time, but his failing health forced him to withdraw. Dr. Caldwell. resumed the practice of medicine after his return to Midway, and is now one of the most popular physicians in the county. As a citizen he is equally pop- ular, and in 1876 was elected to the state legislature as the first demo- cratic representative from Bullock county; in 1878 he was re-elected, but after that time declined further political honors. The doctor has been a Mason for many years, was once worshipful master of Social lodge at Enon, and also of Felix lodge at Midway. He has filled the position of president of the Bullock County Medical society, is now a member of the American Medical association, and is held in as high esteem by his professional brethren as he is by the general public. M. J. Caldwell, his eldest son, when sixteen years old, enlisted in the militia service of Alabama, was taken prisoner near Mobile, sent to Ship island and kept for a time under negro guards.
DR. AUGUSTIN CLAYTON CRYMES, now a practicing physician in Mid- way, Bullock county, Ala., was born in Heard county, Ga., in 1834, and is a son of Dr. George W. and Jane S. (Ector) Crymes. The former, of
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English descent, was born in Greenville district, S. C., in 1809, and the latter in Oglethorpe county, Ga., in 1816. Dr. George W. Crymes passed his youthful days on the home plantation, attending school the meanwhile and preparing for a profession, the result being that he graduated in medicine from the Transylvania university at Lexington, Ky. His first practice was at the place where Atlanta, Ga., now stands, from which point he removed to Heard county, Ga., where he married in 1831. Thence he went to Oak Bowery, Chambers county, Ala., and afterward to Tuskegee, Macon county, Ala., later to Enon, Bullock county, Ala., where he died in 1873, after a very successful professional career. His first wife preceded him to the grave in 1844. He was a Union man and regretted the action of his adopted state in seceding from the sisterhood of states, but after his state withdrew from the Union he readily followed her. Dr. Crymes was a Freemason and was considered by the brotherhood to be a true one. Dr. A. C. Crymes is the second-born in a family of four sons and two daughters. Besides the doctor, two of the sons bore arms in maintenance of the rights of the south in the late Civil war. Albert F., the elder brother, was a first lieutenant in the First Alabama infantry, having left Greensboro college, at the beginning of the revolt, to uphold the Confederate cause. He fought the Tennessee campaign and the Atlanta campaign, was captured at Island Ten later, served nine months' imprisonment at Camp Douglas, Chicago, Ill., and was eventually killed, in 1864, at the battle of Franklin, Tenn. George P., another brother, was a private in the First Alabama rigiment, and served with it through all its marches and engagements, was captured at Island Ten, and was confined in Camp Douglas, but he survived the war and died in Barbour county, Ala., in 1878, being atthe time a schoolteacher. Dr. A. C. Crymes received his preparatory lessons in medicine under his father, attended his first course of lectures at the Louisville ( Ky.) Medical college in 1854-55, and graduated, in 1856, from the Jefferson Medical college of Philadelphia, Penn. His first practice was for a short time at Indian Creek. now in Bullock county, Ala., whence he went to Batesville, Barbour county. In 1862, he was appointed surgeon of the Thirty-ninth Alabama regiment, Confederate States army, and followed General Bragg through his Kentucky campaign. He also was in the engagements at Mur- freesboro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge and the Atlanta campaign; was at Franklin and Nashville and in the retreat to Corinth; was with John- ston in North Corolina and in the fight at Kingston and Bentonville, and was always ready for duty excepting a few days when he was confined in the hospital. When the sanguinary conflict had ended he returned to his practice in Batesville, where he resided until 1882, when he settled in Midway, where his services are appreciated in full, as those of a physician of thirty-six years' constant practice should be. Planting. also occupies the doctor's attention, but his art is to him the more absorbing. The marriage of the doctor took place, in 1867, to Miss Mattie R., daughter of
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L. R. Wilson, who came from South Carolina to Alabama, about the year 1850, and settled in Barbour county, where he pursued his vocation of planting until his death in 1873. Mrs. Crymes was born in the Palmetto state in 1848. She received a most excellent education at Eufaula, Ala., and has always been an ornament to the society in which she moves. She is the happy mother of five children named as follows: Emma C., now the wife of F. L. Merritt; Augustine Clayton, Jr. ; Walter W .; Mattie, and George W., who died in his seventh year. The doctor is a Freemason, has been a Methodist from childhood, and for several years has been a member of the state and county medical associations.
MAJOR ISAAC F. CULVER, the famous planter and live-stock breeder of Bullock county, Ala., was born in Hancock county, Ga., in 1831, and is a son of Isaac and Margaret (Grace) Culver, natives of the same county. In 1851 the family came to Alabama and located in Henry county, where the father died in 1858, at the age of sixty-two years, and the mother in 1867, at seventy-eight years of age, both members of the Methodist church. Isaac Culver began life a poor man, but was ener. getic and enterprising, and amassed quite a fortune. He served in the Florida war and was active in all public affairs affecting the section in which he lived, although he never sought public office. He was a son of John Culver, a native of England, who was brought, when young, to America, by his parents, who first located in Delaware, but subsequently removed to Georgia, where John married, lived and died. The maternal grandfather of Isaac Culver was Jephtha Grace, who was a planter, and lived and died in Hancock county, Ga. Maj. Culver is the youngest but one of the ten children born to his parents, of whom two, beside himself, served in the late war: George W., a planter, and for a short time a colonel in Hilliard's legion, and who died in Henry county, Ala .; Jephtha, who served with the state troops under Gov. Brown for about a year, and who died at Jonesborough, Ga., soon after the fall of Atlanta. The major received a good education in his early days and completed it at Mount Zion, in Hancock county, Ga. In 1850 he married Miss Mary, daughter of John Boran, a native of Georgia, who died in Washington, Wilkes county. Mrs. Culver was born and educated in Washington, Ga., and died in 1858, leaving three daughters, viz .: Maggie, widow of the late J. J. Ramsey, a well-known horse breeder of Union Springs; Mary L., wife of William R. Ethridge, and Fannie H., wife of D. F. Sessions. The major took for his second wife Mrs. Nancy Pugh, widow of Dr. Thomas Pugh, a cousin of United States Senator James L. Pugh. This lady was born and educated in Barbour county, Ala., and is a daughter of Roderick McSwain, a native of Scotland, who, when a young man, settled in North Carolina, where he married, and in 1836 came to Alabama, became a wealthy planter, and died in Barbour county. To his second marriage the major has had born to him two sons, viz .: Roderick McSwain, now a well-to-do planter, and Rev. Frank Pugh, of the Meth-
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odist church. Both are graduates of the Southern university of Greens- boro, Ala. When Maj. Culver first came to Alabama, in 1851, he located in Henry county, where he resided until 1860, when he removed to Bul- lock county, which has since been his home. In May, 1861, he joined Company A., Sixth Alabama infantry, as a private, and was at once sent to Virginia. He fought at Seven Pines, Cold Harbor, Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, Boonsboro Gap, Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, Gettys- burg, the Wilderness, and many other points. He was severely wounded at Malvern Hill, at Boonsboro Gap, and at Gettysburg, returning home each time for treatment. At the expiration of his first term of enlist- ment for one year he was commissioned captain, and after the battle of Chancellorsville he was promoted to be major, and in the trenches at Petersburg he was made lieutenant-colonel, and from that time on had command of his regiment, which he led with gallantry and valor. Al- though common courtesy would lead a person to greet him as Col. Culver, the major is too modest to claim a higher title than the one he bears. The major is one of the most popular men in Bullock county, where he has been placed in various positions of honor and trust. In 1878 he was elected to the legislature, and again in 1880, and during both terms was chairman of the committee on temperance. When his last term had expired he was elected superintendent of education of Bullock county, which office he filled six years, holding also, during this period, the office of president of the state agricultural society and of the Alabama State Fair association. He is progressive in all things. He is a large stock- holder in the Union Springs cotton mills, a director in the oil mill com- pany, and has one of the most extensive and complete stock farms in Alabama, as well as a cotton plantation. He is a man of broad views and commanding presence, and was at one time worshipful master of Aberfoil lodge, F. & A. M., and is at present a member of St. John's lodge, No. 62, F. & A. M., at Union Springs, He is active iu politics and all public matters, and has a wide acquaintance at the north as well as at the south.
MAJOR JAMES M. FEAGIN, one of the oldest residents of Midway, Bullock county, Ala., is the gentleman whose name heads this sketch, and his pioneer history, connected with that of his father, will be found to be a very interesting one. He was born in Jones county, Ga., in 1814, a son of Samuel and Nancy (Wadsworth) Feagin. Samuel Feagin, the father, was born in 1782. at Feaginsville (now Carthage), a village of North Carolina, named in honor of his own family. Mrs. Feagin was a native of Warren county, Ga., and was born in 1790. While yet a young man, Samuel Feagin removed from his native state to Georgia, where, in 1813, he married his first wife, who died in 1827. Mr. Feagin had no op- portunities in his early days for acquiring an education, but he was intellectually endowed, and had an ambition which tended to literature, and this he gratified to its fullness by self-education, storing his mind
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with facts gleaned from the best books of his day, and with ideas and pictures or imagery drawn from the best poets and writers of tales of fiction founded on stern reality and historical events. He became a school teacher eventually, and also a useful and influential citizen, and, during the war of 1812, was sheriff of Jones county, which office he also filled for a number of years afterward. He also served as county com- missioner and as justice of the peace a number of years, and proved him - self to be worthy of all the trust reposed in him. His daily vocation was that of a planter, which he followed in Georgia and Alabama, to which latter state he removed in 1836, and settled in the woods of Bullock county, in what is now Midway township. But his residence here was not altogether a peaceful one, for the Indians were troublesome, and he was compelled to leave his first year's crop for a while and flee to Louis- ville, in Barbour county, for safety from the attacks of the savages. Returning, however, he succeeded in clearing up a handsome farm, and also influenced the establishment of a postoffice at Midway, of which he was appointed postmaster, and which position he filled, carrying on the office in his own store until his death, in 1848, when his son, Major James M., took charge and filled it until just prior to the late civil war. Samuel Feagin was a son of Richardson Feagin, who was also born in North Carolina, of Irish parentage. He was somewhat nearsighted and, not- withstanding his desire to enter the army of the Revolution, was there- fore precluded from going to the field; but the parents were full of sympathy with the colonies and of antagonism to the tyrannical govern- ment which had so long persecuted their native island, and freely con- tributed several of their children to the ranks of the patriot army. The maternal grandfather of the major, James Wadsworth, was probably a Virginian by birth, of English descent, but passed the last years of his life in Jones county, Ga., and was a wealthy planter, too young to enter the Revolution. Major James M. Feagin, the eldest in a family of eight children, was reared on a farm under the watchful eye of a kind mother, was educated at the common school until her death, in 1827, when, not. being educationally inclined, he permitted his studies to relax. In 1836 he came to Alabama with his family, and soon had an opportunity to dis- play the inherent bravery of his race. He had been a resident of an old- settled country, and was not acquainted with the wily habits of the wild sons of the forest, and had much to learn in relation to the savages in order to be able to compete with them in the then impending struggle with them. This trouble, it has been alleged, was originated through a belief, on the part of the Indians, that they had been swindled out of their lands by the United States government, or by its agents. But the major claims that it began at the house of a neiglibor of his parents, through too great an imbibition on the part of the copper-skinned natives of firewater. This neighbor kept a store a short distance north of the residence of the Feagin family, and there, one day, about fifteen Indians
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