Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 5.djvu/438

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

Charles Landon Carter Minor, captain in United States army.

Lewis Willis Minor, surgeon in the United States navy and Confederate States navy, married Eloise Inerarity, of Mobile, Ala- bama.

Mary Berkeley Minor, Mr. Blackford's mother (see ante. p. 846).

James Monroe Minor, surgeon in United States navy, married Ellen Pierpont, of Brooklyn, New York, father of Dr. Charles Lancelot Minor, of Asheville, North Caro- lina.

Lancelot Byrd Minor, a clergyman of the Episcopal church, who went to Africa as a missionary and died there, near Cape Pat- mos. He married Mary Stuart, of Balti- more.

It was the only daughter of this family, Mary Berkeley Minor, who married William Matthews Blackford, and was the mother of Charles Minor Blackford, the subject of this sketch. She survived her husband more than thirty-two years, and died on the 14th of September, 1896, in the ninety-fourth year of her age, at the home of her son. Dr. Lancelot Minor Blackford, at the Epis- copal High School, near Alexandria, Vir- ginia. The children of this marriage, all born at Fredericksburg, Virginia, were:

Lucy Landon Blackford, born November 6. 1826; married Dr. John Staige Davis, one of the professors in the school of medicine at the LIniversity of Virginia, July 10, 1847, and died at the university, February 18, 1859.

William Willis Blackford, born March 23, 1831 ; married, January 10, 1856, Mary Rob- ertson, eldest daughter of Wyndam Robert- son, of Richmond, Virginia, subsequently of Abingdon, Virginia, died at Lynnhaven Bay, Virginia, May i, 1905.

Charles Minor Blackford, born October 17, 1833; married, February 17, 1856, to Susan Leigh Colston ; died in Lynchburg, Virginia, March 10, 1903.

Benjamin Lewis Blackford, born August 5, 1835 ; married Nannie Steinbergen ; died in Staunton, Virginia, September 25, 1908.

Lancelot Minor Blackford, born February 27, 1837 ; married Eliza Chew Ambler, Au- gust 5, 1884; died at the Episcopal High School, Alexandria. Virginia, May 23, 1914.

Eugene Blackford, born April 11, 1839; married Rebecca Chapman Gordon, only

child of John M. Gordon, of Baltimore; died at Pikesville, Maryland, February 4, 1908.

Mary Isabella Blackford, born November 2.J, 1840; married J. Churchill Cooke, March i6, 1865; now (1915) living on York river, in King William county, Virginia.

Charles Minor Blackford, the second son of this family, was a delicate child. The account he gives of his earlier childhood, "saddened and rendered unhappy by suffer- ing from sore eyes," serves to mark the ad- vance of medical science during the eighty years which have elapsed. He says :

For about five years I was kept in a dark room and by virtue of the barbaric arts practiced by the medical men of that day I was subjected to the tortures of multifarious remedies and suffered many things of many physicians, among which poulticing, bleeding, cupping, leeching, blistering, starving, and every phase of depleting, were scarcely the worst. Finally after one eye was entirely blind, and the other nearly so, I had a seton put on the back of my neck, as though to punish me for my misfor- tune. About this time, some ray of light seemed to strike the faculty, and they concluded, as all their efforts had failed, they would give Nature a chance; having violated her every rule, they con- cluded as a desperate remedy in a desperate case, to conform to her requirements and see the effect. I was taken out of the dark room, the various pro- cesses of depletion stopped, the bleeding, leeching and cupping ceased, the blisters were taken off, the seton dried up, generous and nourishing food given me, and I was sent into the country, and given free range at Miss Betty Hill's place, Mt. Airy, in Caro- line County, where soon Nature asserted herself and my vigorous constitution triumphed over disease, my eyesight returned, and I got well — one eye is impaired and stands a monument of the doctors' folly.

He remained at Mount Airy, under the care of Miss Hill, his mother's lifelong inti- mate friend, from 1840 until 1844, when, eleven years old, he went back to Fred- ericksburg, for the first time in his life physi- cally fit to go to school. Even at this early age, he gave evidence of the patient per- sistence, dogged determination, and sym- pathetic nature which marked his career and made his success. His grandmother offered a dollar to which ever of her grandsons memorized within a stated period certain designated Bible verses. Of them all, only this little fellow, handicapped by bad eyes and delayed schooling, proved himself will- ing to sacrifice his playtime to win the prize. He wanted it and seeing an honorable way to get it, he went after it and won, just as in maturer life he overrode obstacles which