Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/837

Rh severe encounter with the enemy at Winchester. In the spring of 1865 he was on his way with his command to join General Lee when they received news of the surrender at Appomattox. An effort was made to unite with Johnston's army, but the attempt was given up and the command disbanded, after reaching Chatham, Va. During his service he was repeatedly struck by the enemy's bullets and slightly wounded, but never so severely as to disable him. Since the war he has been engaged in farming. He is a man of influence, was educated at Roanoke college, and is highly esteemed by his community.

Holt Fairfield Butt, M. D., of Portsmouth, Va., a representative of a patriotic family of southeastern Virginia, was born at Portsmouth, in March, 1835. His father, Dr. Robert Bruce Butt, who was born in Norfolk county in 1789 and served as a surgeon in the war of 1812, was the son of Robert Butt, a native of Norfolk county, who served in the Virginia legislature soon after the Revolutionary war. He married a daughter of Alexander Bruce. This latter ancestor of Dr. Butt was the second son of Robert Bruce, of Grangemyre, County of Fife, Scotland, and came to Virginia about the year 1750. The mother of Dr. Butt, Mary Margaret Wilson, was the daughter of Holt Wilson, a Portsmouth merchant, and a grand-daughter of Col. John Wilson, a Revolutionary soldier, whose wife was Margaret Bruce. It thus appears that both paternally and maternally Dr. Butt is connected with the famous Scottish family. In ante-bellum days Dr. Butt received a thorough academic and professional education in the school of W. R. Galt, Webster's institute, and the university of Virginia, and was graduated as doctor of medicine by the university of Pennsylvania in 1836. From that time until 1861 he practiced at Portsmouth. At the outbreak of the civil war he held the rank of surgeon of the Third regiment, Virginia militia, and he was subsequently attached to Ramseur's battery and the Thirty-second North Carolina infantry, army of Northern Virginia. Later he was brigade surgeon of Daniel's North Carolina brigade, Rodes' division, Second army corps. He went into service early in 1861, serving about Portsmouth and on the James river until Norfolk and that region were abandoned by the Confederate troops, and afterward was with his command at Petersburg and through the Peninsular campaign, and subsequent operations, including the battle of Gettysburg. On the return of the army from Pennsylvania he was ordered to General hospital No. 5. at Wilmington, N. C., where he remained about eight months. Thence ordered to Kittrell Springs, N. C., he established a well-organized hospital, accommodating five hundred patients, and remained on duty there until ordered to Greensboro, after General Lee's surrender, and was soon afterward paroled. Returning to Portsmouth at the close of his military experience, he resumed his practice as a physician and surgeon, and since then has continued in this professional work. He was the first president of the local medical society, was for a considerable period quarantine officer, and physician to the almshouse, and is a member of the State medical society and Medical association of eastern Virginia. In 1858 he was married to Emily Sue, daughter of Dr. William S. Riddick, of Portsmouth. Their children living are: Holt Fairfield; Virginia Riddick, wife of Harry Lee Watts; Alexander Bruce; James