Unveiling a Statue of Dr. Hunter McGuire. 255
exceeded that of any other member of his profession in all the re- gions west of the Blue Ridge mountains. Many came to him from afar to be healed. As a surgeon, his operations down to the close of his life fully sustained his well-earned reputation. His specialty, if any he had, was the eye, and multitudes came from Maryland, from Pennsylvania, and from beyond the Alleghanies to receive treatment at his hands. He was the frankest and the most unas- suming of men; bluntness well-nigh to the verge of brusqueness marked his deliverances of speech, but no man had nicer perceptions of the proprieties of life, and none more free than he from inten- tionally wounding the sensibilities of others. His correctness and rapidity of diagnosis were marvellous. His originality in the selec- tion of remedies, and in his methods of treatment, were matters of wonder and approval by his profession. Although sixty years of age at the outbreak of the war, he instantly offered his services, was commissioned as surgeon, and placed in charge of the hospitals at Lexington.
He had married Ann Eliza Moss, of Fairfax county, his first cousin, their mothers being daughters of Colonel Joseph Holmes, an officer in the Continental Line, and county lieutenant of Fred- erick county during the Revolutionary war.
Of this marriage was born, on the nth of October, 1835, Hunter Holmes McGuire, who was called after his great uncle, Major Andrew Hunter Holmes, an officer of the United States army, who had fallen at the battle of Mackinaw.
Hunter received his academic education at the Winchester Acad- emy, where he might have seen his father's name graven on the desks, and where a succession of Scotch and Irish schoolmasters had done so much to give strength and form to the characters of several generations of men. He was a grave, earnest, manly boy, taking little part in the games and sports of his school-fellows, but always held by them in deepest respect and affection for his frank, amiable disposition, his unswerving devotion to truth, and his un- flinching courage. He was not a brilliant student and gave no other promise ot his future distinction than was implied in his strik- ing traits of character. His father, in association with other physi- cians, had founded a Medical College at Winchester, which, for many years before the war, was largely attended by students. Here Hunter McGuire received his early medical training, which was de- veloped further at the medical schools in Philadelphia. From 1856 to 1858 he held the Chair of Anatomy in the college at Winchester,
