Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/364

 MRGIXIA BIOGRAPHY

associated with him. The following year he entered the Jefferson Medical College, from which he graduated with the class of 1889. Immediately thereafter he returned to Roanoke and resumed his relations with Dr. Koiner. with whom he was associated for six years in the practice of surgery. In the year 1889, Dr. Simmons entered as a char- ter member the newly formed Roanoke Light Infantry, and later, July 18, 1893, was made an assistant surgeon and captain of the Second Virginia Infantry by (iovernor McKinney. This rank he held until the out- break of the Spanish war, when he was ordered by Governor Tyler, May 8, 1898, to make an examination of the Virginia Volunteers at Richmond, and on June 2 of the same year was ordered with the Second Virginia Regiment to Jacksonville, Florida, to the Seventh Army Corps, commanded by General Fitzhugh Lee. At the same time he was appointed assistant to the chief surgeon of the Seventh Army Corps, his duties being executive and administrative. At the con- clusion of the war, he was asked by Sur- geon-General Sternberg to remain in the army, but declined and returned to his pri- vate practice at Roanoke. In 1899 a recruit- ing station for the United States army was established at Roanoke, and Dr. Simmons was appointed examining surgeon, a posi- tion which he still holds. Dr. Simmons was one of the organizers and the first com- mander of the George H. Bentley Camp of Spanish War Veterans, and in 1910 was elected by the State Encampment as com- mander of the Department of Virginia, serving in this office for one term, and now (1913) is a member of the staff of the commander-in-chief. Dr. Simmons is a member of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States. He was one of the organizers of the Roanoke Medical Society which afterwards became the Roanoke Academy of Medicine. Dur- ing the time that it was the Medical Society, he served for two terms as its secretary, and since its change of name has been its vice-president. To his many professional duties was added another in the year 1910, when he was appointed coroner for the city of Roanoke, an office in which he has made such a record that he has been returned to it ever since.

Dr. Simmons married. April 30, 1900, Nina S. Sollee, a daughter of Captain Francis Sol-

lee, of Jacksonville, Florida, an officer of the Confederate army, and of Rebecca Louise (Hopkins) Sollee, his wife. To Dr. and Airs. Simmons have been born two children, Nina Sollee and Ann Louise Simmons. Mrs. Simmons is a prominent member of the Wil- liam Watts Chapter of the United Daugh- ters of the Confederacy. She is a communi- cant of the Episcopal church and attends St. John's Church of that denomination in Roanoke, in the connected charities of which she is an active worker.

James Massey Seegar. The opportunities and needs of the times were the influences that caused James Massey Seegar to forsake the state with whose interests his family has been long identified, always in honor- able capacity, Maryland, and to contribute his share to the business activities of the Old Dominion, where he has made a worthy record and has worked credit to the states of his birth and of his adoption. As head of the firm of L. C. Clarke & Company, of Danville, he has gained a leading place in his line throughout Virginia, his business standing high among the mercantile institu- tions of its city. Queen Anne county, ]\Iary- land, is his birthplace and that of his father and grandfather, the latter, James Massey Seegar, having been a farmer of that county. He married a Miss Massey, whose father held the major's rank in the American army in the war of 1812 and was second in com- mand of the troops at Oueenstown when the British, attempting to force a landing, were repulsed and prevented from using that route to Baltimore. James M. Seegar was the father of six children, among them James Massey, of whom further.

James Massey Seegar, father of James M. Seegar, was born near Centerville, Queen Anne county, Maryland, in 1820, died near Centerville, Maryland, in 1872. For the greater part of his life he conducted agri- cultural operations, a line of endeavor in which he was very successful. He married Frances Ann Hopper Emory, born in Queen Anne county. Maryland, daughter of Dr. John King Beck Emory, who died at the Seegar home near Centerville, Maryland. Dr. Emory was a medical practitioner in Elkton, Maryland. James Massey and Frances Ann Hopper (Emory) Seegar were the parents of six children, one of whom, Olivia, died aged twenty-two years. Those