Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/416

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

i!i.me was distinguished in England by Wil- liam Whitehead, the poet laureate. His father, William Boykin Whitehead, born in Southampton county, Virginia, was a large sugar planter in Louisiana, and was married to Emeline F. Riddick, a descend- ant of Col. Willis Riddick, of revolutionary fame. William Riddick Whitehead was graduated at the \'irginia Military Insti- tute, Lexington, Virginia, in 185 1 ; studied medicine for one year at the University of Virginia, and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Penn- sylvania. After a year's further study in Paris he obtained, through Prince Gortcha- koff, Russian ambassador at Vienna, an ap- pointment to the Russian army, then fight- ing in the Crimea. Hf; was ordered to Odessa, and later to Sebastopol, obtaining extensive experience in f.rmy surgery under Pirogoff, the great Russian surgeon. At the close of the war he was decorated by the Czar with the cross of the Imperial Order of St. Stanislaus. In i860 he received the degree in medicine from the faculty of Paris, and upon his return to America was chosen professor of clinical medicine in the New York Medical College. Immediately after the fall of Sumter he returned to the South, and became surgeon in the Forty-fourth Virginia Infantry. He was successively regimental surgeon, senior surgeon of l)ri- gade, acting surgeon of division, and, dur- ing the last year of the war, president of the board in South Carolina for the examina- tion of conscripts and disabled soldiers. He tended Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson on the battlefield, when wounded at Chancellors- ville. He was taken prisoner by the Fed- eral army after the battle of Gettysburg, and was subsequently detained in Fort Mc-

llenry. He escaped, made his way tlirough New York and Canada to Bermuda, whence he embarked on a blockade runner, and re- turned to Richmond. After the war he be- gan practice in New York City, and remain- ed there until 1872, when he removed to Penx-er. Colorado. In 1874 he was elected a mcnil)er of the common council, and wa^ chairman of the committee on health. He initiated the movement toward the estab- lishment of the city's present system of sew- erage. He was president of the Denver and also of the Colorado State Aledical societies, was instrumental in founding the medical schools of the University of Denver and the University of Colorado, and was an active member of the American Medical Congress and the American Orthopaedic Association. His contrilnitions to medical and other journals on subjects connected with his j)ro- fcssion have been numerous and varied. In 18^13 he was married to Eliza P., a daugh- ter of Col. Thomas G. Benton, who was a cousin of Thomas H. Benton, the famous senator from Missouri.

Armistead, Henry Beauford, was born in Upperville, Fauquier county, \"irginia. Oc- tober 19, 1833, son of John C. and Annie S (Harrison) Armistead. He comes of a mili- tary ancestry, as in every American war, from early colonial times to the close of the war Ijetvveen the states, the Armisteads have acted their parts as gallant and patri- otic soldiers. Major John Baylor Armi- stead, his grandfather, was the oldest of six Irnthers, five of whom were officers in the I'nited States army. One of these brothers, Col. Lewis Armistead, led the forlorn hope and was killed in the assault on Fort Eric, ir. the war of 181 2, and another. Col. George