3^H
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
