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Colonel Henry Peeble Kingsbury (1850-1923)
Colonel Henry Peeble (Hal) Kingsbury was one of the best known army officers in the country, and one of the very first, if not THE first, white man appointed from the south to West Point after the War Between the States. He was a participant in many of the Indian engagements, including the search for the famed, Geronimo, Indian chief. At the battle of san Juan Hill, during the Spanish American War, he was in charge of four troops of the sixth cavalry as a major. He was several times in the Philippines and aided in searching for the wily Aguinaldo. Colonel Kingsbury was sent by the government to China during the Box Rebellion. He retired at the age of 64, but when war was declared on Germany President Wilson restored him to the army and he was made commandant of Fort Slocum, NY during the entire war. Colonel Kingsbury married Miss Florence Slocum, daughter of General Henry Slocum, for whom Fort Slocum was named. April 26, 1916 -- Colonel H. P. Kingsbury, a retired US Army officer residing in Washington, was the guest of Mr. R. W. Lassiter three days last week. Colonel Kingsbury was born where General Royster now lives, on Front St. near Gilliam. He is the son of the late Russell H. Kingsbury, who did a mercantile business for many years at the intersection of Main and Littlejohn St. Colonel Kingsbury was the first cadet to enter West Point Military Academy after the war. He received the appointment from the hands of General Grant soon after Johnson's surrender near Durham. The three big merchants in Oxford during Colonel Kingsbury's childhood days were his father, Russell Kingsbury, Herndon and Kyle. Theodore Bryant Kingsbury (1828-1913) Theodore Bryant Kingsbury, orator, historian, clergyman, author, literary critic, journalist, and editor of large city dailies was born in the Guion Hotel at Raleigh on August 28, 1828, the son of Russell and Mary Sumner Bryant Kingsbury. His father, a native of Connecticut was a linear descendant of Henry Kingsbury who emigrated from England to Massachusetts with John Winthrop in 1630, and with his wife was among the original twenty-six members of the First Church, Boston. Russell Kingsbury arrived in North Carolina between 1812 and 1815 and settled in Granville county, where he became a farmer and merchant. A lover of books, he owned and read works by some of the best authors. He served as a town commissioner of Oxford and as a trustee of the Oxford Male and Female academies. Theodore Bryant Kingsbury's mother, a native of Scotland Neck and a member of a prominent North Carolina family, died in 1836 when he was eight. Kingsbury's delicate health during childhood, plus his father's example, caused him to form an early taste for books rather than the active sports that fascinated his young friends. According to memoranda of his readings that he kept as a youth, he was a habitual reader from age nine, perusing the writings of Plutarch, Hume, Smollett, Miller, Josephus, and Shakespeare as well as Rollin's Ancient History, certain volumes of Jared Sparks, Library of American Biography, and other solid works. He studied at the Oxford Male Academy and later at the Lovejoy Academy, Raleigh, where he was captain of the student cadet corps. In 1847-48 he attended the University of North Carolina, where he gained recognition as a skillful writer, but left without graduating. His father wished him to study law and offered to finance his way through the Harvard Law School, but the young man chose instead to enter the mercantile business, which he followed for several years. Early in 1858 Kingsbury became editor of the Leisure Hour: A Literary and Family Journal, a weekly newspaper owned and published by F. K. Strother at Oxford. Kingsbury filled the paper's columns with scholarly essays on literature, history and biography, attracting favorable attention outside the state and drawing high praise from--among others--John R. Thompson, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond, VA, and Paul H. Hayne, the noted poet, then editor of Russell's Magazine published in Charleston, SC. At home the Leisure Hour was less well received. When Kingsbury relinquished his editorship on January 27, 1859, Strother pledged to continue the paper, promising to make it "a news weekly of the family and literary type"; he hoped to dispel the reputation it had acquired under Kingsbury that it took two people to read it--one to hold the paper and the other to look up words in the dictionary. In June of 1859 Kingsbury declined a professorship of literature at Trinity College in order to prepare himself for the Methodist ministry, which he soon entered. On three separate occasions he declined the editorship of the North Carolina Christian Advocate, the official organ of North Carolina Methodists. About 1866 he left the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and became a Baptist as a consequence of his changed views on baptism, which he set forth in a book of 275 pages, What Is Baptism? (1867). From 1866 to 1869, he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church, Warrenton, while editing--from January 9, 1867--a new weekly and semiweekly newspaper, the Warrenton Indicator. He also briefly held a post with the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1868 Wake Forest College awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity in recognition of his services to the Baptist denomination. In March 1869 Kingsbury left the ministry to become associate editor of the Raleigh Sentinel, of which Josiah Turner was editor and which was published during this period as a weekly, semiweekly, and daily. In 1875 and 1875 Kingsbury edited S. D. Poole's Educational Journal. In September 1874, when the periodical was moved from New Bern to Raleigh, he became associate editor of Poole's literary and historical magazine, Our Living and Our Dead, which after October 1873 served as the official journal of the North Carolina branch of the Southern Historical Society. Kingsbury wrote numerous historical and biographical sketches for the magazine as well as many essays on such subjects as education, southern textbooks, plagiarism, and poetry. Though he was one of the better informed southern literary critics of the period, he reviewed few books in detail, having little time to read. In 1876 he accepted a position on the editorial staff of the Wilmington Morning Star, where he remained until becoming editor of the Wilmington Messenger in 1888. From May 1902, when he retired from the Messenger, until September 3, 1911, he contributed weekly articles on a variety of subjects to the Sunday edition of the Raleigh News and Observer. By his own generation Kingsbury was highly regarded as both an editor and a literary critic, and in 1888 he received an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University of North Carolina. The total volume of his writings was enormous and included a great deal of historical and biographical material. In addition to his contributions to the magazines and newspapers he served in an editorial capacity, he wrote a number of books--among them a guide to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition--and was the author of some twelve sketches in Biographical Contributions of Harvard University, edited by Justin Winsor. On May 1, 1851 Kingsbury married Sallie Jones Atkinson, the daughter of General Roger P. Atkinson of Virginia (a relative of descendants of Thomas Jefferson, the Randolphs, Lees, and Pryors) and his wife, Margaret M. Littlejohn Atkinson, formerly of Oxford. The couple had nine children. Kingsbury died on June 4, 1913 at his home in Wilmington, survived by his widow, two daughters, and a son, Dr. Walter Russell Kingsbury. Funeral services were conducted from the residence with burial the following day at Oxford. Before the Civil War Kingsbury was a Henry Clay Whig; after the war he was a Democrat. In later life he re-affiliated with the Methodist Church. Reverend Joseph Labaree Reverend Joseph Labaree was from New York state. He was pastor of the Presbyterian Church from 1826-1829 and principal at the Oxford Female Academy. (from Hays, Oxford Men and Women, Vol. 16, pages 143-145) Benjamin Kittrell Lassiter (1884-1967) Benjamin Kittrell Lassiter was a prominent businessman of Oxford and also served the town as postmaster. He was born in Oxford, November 25, 1884, a son of Robert W. and Letty (Kittrell) Lassiter. His father was a well-known banker of this section of NC. Ben was education is Oxford’s most famous institution, the Horner Military School and from there entered the University of North Carolina where he was graduated in the literary course in 1905 and obtained his LLB degree from the law department in 1907. Mr. Lassiter practiced law five years with Gen. B. S. Royster, after which he was alone in the profession, and later became a member of the firm of Parham & Lassiter, his partner being B. W. Parham. Besides a general practice as a lawyer, Mr. Lassiter was treasurer of Robert W. Lassiter & Company, treasurer of the Raleigh Granite Company, and came to his responsibilities and duties as postmaster of Oxford by open competition with rivals for that office, a primary having been held on April 6, 1917, at which Mr. Lassiter polled a plurality of votes. He was active in democratic party affairs, was chairman of the Executive Committee of Granville County in 1911, and in 1912 was elected chairman of the County Board of Education. He was a member of the Masonic Order, the Woodmen of the World, the junior Order of United American Mechanics, and in 1916 was delegate to the Grand Lodge of the latter order at Raleigh. He was junior warden in St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. December 29, 1915, Mr. Lassiter married Dorothea Coggeshall Niles, daughter of Dr. G. A. and Eliza S. Coggeshall. They had one daughter, Letty Kittrell Lassiter. Benjamin Lassiter died in Oxford, NC on October 18, 1967. Lyman Latham Lyman Latham from Massachusetts was a blacksmith. His shop was located in the first house of worship of Oxford Methodist Church near the south corner of Main and Sycamore St. He was a town commissioner. (from Hays, Oxford Men and Women, Vol. 16, pages 143-145) Willis Lewis Willis Lewis was one of the managers of the lottery to raise money for the Oxford Academy. He was a senator from 1816-17 and a member of the lower house in 1826. (from Hays, Oxford Men and Women, Vol. 16, pages 143-145) Joseph B. Littlejohn Joseph B. Littlejohn was a brother of Thomas B. Littlejohn. He was a member of Oxford Academy in 1816, a trustee of the Methodist Church in 1826, lived in and likely built the residence of Frank W. Bullock. Thomas Blount Littlejohn (1773-1854) Thomas B. Littlejohn was the eldest son of William Littlejohn and Sarah Blount. He was sent to Granville County, NC as a young man to open a branch store for his father, and there married Elizabeth Mutter on December 6, 1798. They were great grandparents of Mrs. Augustus Steele Hall. He farmed and merchandised for many years, and is considered by tradition to be the Founder of the town of Oxford. In 1812 Littlejohn sold to Granville County for $2,636.00, a tract of 50 acres adjoining the court house upon which to lay out a town to be called Oxford. He was a member of Oxford's first board of commissioners appointed by the General Assembly in the act incorporating the town and again when the Assembly reincorporated Oxford in 1825. Littlejohn served as the county clerk and master in equiety for many years. He was also a founding father of the First Presbyterian Church, and gave the land upon which the church was built. When he was about 80 years old and in declining health, he went to live with his youngest daughter, Mrs. George Field, at her home "Glenwood" (formerly known as Roseland) in Warren County, where he died in his 81st year. He was buried in the Littlejohn Family Cemetery in Oxford, beside his wife who had died 32 years prior. In 1925, the 6 graves in the family cemetery were moved to the city cemetery, Elmwood, to a city-owned plot that was set aside by special order of the town commissioners. |