University of Virginia Library

HON. JOHN LEWIS PEYTON,

Of Steephill, by Staunton, Virginia, lawyer, litterateur, and author,
was born in Staunton in 1824, and is a son of the eminent lawyer, John
Howe Peyton, by his second wife Ann Montgomery, a daughter of
Major John Lewis of the Sweet Springs, West Virginia, a distinguished
officer of the Revolutionary army, son of Col. William Lewis, a colonial
military officer, and one of the survivors of Braddock's bloody defeat,
a nephew of Gen. Andrew Lewis, the hero of Point Pleasant, and a
grandson of Col. John Lewis, the Huguenot founder of Augusta county
Major Lewis married Mary, a daughter of Col. William Preston of
Smithfield, Virginia, and thus J. L. Peyton is the kinsman of William
Campbell Preston of South Carolina, Gov. James McDowell of Virginia,
William Ballard Preston, Gen. John C. Breckenridge, vice-president of the
United States, Gov. B. Gratz Brown of Missouri, Francis P. Blair, Gen.
T. T. Crittenden, Senators Randall, Lee Gibson of Louisiana, and John
E. Kenna of West Virginia, and of many other distinguished men of the
South. He was graduated B. L., University of Virginia, in 1845, in
1852 sent by Daniel Webster, secretary of state, to England, France

and Austria; returned in 1853 and resided two years in Chicago; major
of 1st Chicago regiment of uniformed volunteers, and lieutenant-colonel
commanding 18th battalion, N. G., contributed to the Chicago Democratic
press, associate editor of Danenhower's Literary Budget and
writer for Hunt's Merchant's Magazine of New York, and Appleton's
New American Cyclopedia. He published in 1854 "Pacific Railway
Communications and the Trade of China," and "A Statistical View of
the State of Illinois," etc., which had an extended circulation, and which
the Editor of DeBow's Review said "were invaluable contributions to
the literature of the Times." [See 16 & 17 vol. of DeBow's Review.]
Owing to his high rank at the Chicago bar, was tendered by President
Pierce, the office of U. S. District Attorney for Utah, which he declined
from ill health, returned to Virginia, and was elected Magistrate, Bank
Director, etc., and was appointed by the Governor of Virginia a member
of the Board of Visitors of the Deaf, Dumb and Blind Institution
at Staunton, writing the report of the Board to the Legislature for
the year following. In 1855 married Henrietta, daughter of Colonel
John C. Washington, of Lenoir County, North Carolina, of the illustrious
Washington family of Virginia, whose wife was a daughter of
Southey Bond Esq., of Raleigh, a descendent of one of the Mayflower's
Pilgrim Fathers, and has one son, Lawrence W. H. Peyton. Mrs. Peyton
is a niece of the late Gov. William A. Graham, of North Carolina,
U. S. Senator, Sec'y of the Navy, etc., and is connected with the Haywards,
Branches, Blounts, Bryans, Swains, Clarks, Saunders and other
distinguished North Carolina and Southern families.

In 1861, while Col. J. L. Peyton was engaged in raising and drilling
a force for the Confederate States Army, he was appointed agent of the
State of North Carolina in Europe, broke the blockade at Charleston,
South Carolina, in the Confederate States' Man-of-War, "Nashville,"
Capt. R. B. Pegram commanding, and reached the Bermuda Islands,
where he was received and entertained with distinguished consideration
by Gov. Harry St. George Ord, and the public authorities and the inhabitants
generally, sailed for the Azores, the "Nashville" capturing and burning
en route the U. S. packet ship, "Harvy Birch," reached Southampton,
England, November 21st, 1861, where the officers and crew,
80 in number, of the "Harvy Birch" had their irons knocked off and were
liberated. Sojourned in Europe until 1876, was entertained at the palace
of the Tuilleries by Napoleon III, and made the acquaintance and
acquired the friendship of Lamartine, Arago, Dupin, Victor Hugo, of
Lords Palmerston, Ashburton, Russell, and the leading statesmen,
scholars, and public men of England, France and Italy; was received
in the Vatican by Cardinal Antonelli, and made the acquaintance of
Cardinals Baremeo, Wiseman and other dignitaries of the Church of

Rome; elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London,
and of the society of Americanists, of Luxembourg, Prussia; is a corresponding
member of the Virginia Historical Society, the Wisconsin
State Historical Society and other learned bodies.

Col. Peyton has been a voluminous writer and is author of "The
American Crisis, or Pages from the Note Book of a State Agent during
the Civil War in America," 2 vols., London, 1866. "Over the Alleghanies
and Across the Prairies—Personal Recollections of the Far
West," London, 1867. "A History of Augusta Co., Virginia," Staunton,
1882. "Rambling Reminiscences of a Residence Abroad," Staunton,
1888, and other able and popular works. He edited, with an introduction,
"The Glasse of Time," reprinted in 1887 in New York, from
the London edition of 1620.

Col. Peyton's books published in England were most favorably received
by the British public, and flatteringly reviewed by the leading
literary magazines and journals. Hepworth Dixon, author of "New
America," etc., and editor of "The Athenæum," of London, said that Col.
Peyton had sketched the public men of the civil war in "sharp and biting
acid, and that he was the ablest of the able men sent by the South
to represent her cause in Europe." Bezer Blundell, F. R. S., remarks,
in a pamphlet review of 46 pages of Col. Peyton's works, "He is a
scholar and a gentleman, who, in his exile has not now to learn what
Bœthius discovered more than 1300 years ago, that `the sense of misfortune
may be dignified by the labor of thought.' " . . . "He will, we
persuade ourselves, take in good part our exhortation to emulate the
historical renown of his fellow-countrymen, Bancroft and Motley, or
the late Wm. H. Prescott . . . To the annals of Col. Peyton's
native Virginia, he has contributed valuable materials, but since her
entire history, at least on a scale adequate to her political importance,
has yet to be written, we would commend to his consideration the old
classic admonition spartam nactus es, hanc exorna." John Esten
Cook, in the Southern Review says: "He is a liberal minded traveler,
cosmopolitan in taste, with a quick eye for the characteristic, the
humorous and the picturesque. His style is direct, lucid, unassuming,
and at all times full of simplicity and ease. He observes keenly and
narrates incidents and adventures as he describes character, with the
art of a raconteur, and succeeds in riveting the attention." "That these
works (The American Crisis, and Over the Alleghanies) possess unusual
merits, we feel safe in asserting. One merit, it is not in our eyes a slight
one, is that Col. Peyton everywhere writes like a gentleman. The age
we live in has carried its `fast' and `slap dash' propensities into literature.
Repose, simplicity and that charming unreserve which characterizes
the well-bred gentleman, writing for persons of culture and

intelligence, is his. His descriptions and comments possess great directness
and picturesqueness, mingled with a natural and agreeable humor,
and render his volumes extremely agreeable reading. . . . The works
would prove highly successful, we think, if republished in America."
Mr. Cook writes again: "I have been recently re-reading your excellent
`American Crisis,' and think it your most attractive work. You should
employ your leisure, I think, in adding to these life-like sketches, which,
I think, you have the art to make more interesting than any other
author of the time."

During his long residence in England Col. Peyton was cheered by the
respectful consideration and friendly esteem extended to him by all
classes, particularly persons of literature and science, and his departure
for America was regretted as a general loss to society. Victor
Hugo testified his esteem and friendship by presenting him a copy of
his likeness, suitably inscribed in his own hand writing, which is preserved
at Steephill as a precious souvenir of the immortal poet.

Our author's works, published in America since his return, have been
received with general favor. Literary men, north and south, commending
them as models of their kind, as says Professor Schele de Vere, of
the University of Virginia; and says Professor Richardson, of Dartmouth
College: "Had I possessed the volume in time, I would have
used parts of its investigation in my vol. 1st of American Literature."
Broad, comprehensive, and Catholic in his political views and sentiments,
he does not indulge in State prejudices, or sectional antipathies,
and once remarked to the writer in speaking of the worth of nations,
that "Justice requires that while their follies and vices are remembered,
their virtues should not be forgotten. Individuals and nations
are equally stung with a sense of wrong when their crimes are acrimoniously
recapitulated, and their great and good actions are all forgotten.
This fatal forgetfulness is the origin of that rancor which has
so long desolated the Earth. It distracts private families, confounds
public principles and turns even patriotism into poison. Let those
who have the smallest love for the happiness of mankind, beware how
they indulge this pernicious propensity. He who in every man wishes
to meet a brother will very rarely encounter an enemy."

Col. Peyton "is," says a writer in one of our journals, giving an
account of a visit to his lovely country home, "an old-fashioned man
in the simplicity of his manners and habits, enjoys a joke, goes to the fairs
with the young folks, and is not ashamed to be seen, as he was recently,
surrounded by a troupe of friends, old and young, at a circus. He
makes it a rule to go a fishing at least once a summer with all his household.
He thinks nothing vulgar but what is mean, and he thinks nothing
mean that contributes to health and cheerfulness. Hs is, in a word,

a contented man, whom no good fortune can pamper or corrupt, no
adversity sour, and no fashion change."

Professor C. R. Richardson, on p. 426, of the 2nd vol. of his able and
valuable history of American Literature, gives an extract from a letter
of Col. Peyton, which not only testfies to his own liberal and national
sentiments as to sectionalism in Literature, but to those of the present
generation of Southerners Prof. R. says: "An able, unquestionable and
admirably concise and strong expression of the true Southern attitude
toward American literature, is made by a very competent authority, in
a personal letter to me, from which I am permitted to quote. Col. J.
Lewis Peyton, of Steephill-by-Staunton, Virginia, is peculiarly qualified
to speak on this subject, by descent, by remarkably extended family
connections with the great men of the South, by important services
to the Confederate States, when their representative in England, and by
his own relation to literary work. He writes: `In the South, as with
you, nobody now thinks of the birth place of an American writer, we
only wish to know what he has turned a sheet of white paper into,
with pen and ink, and I hardly think any but a man of diseased mind
and imagination, like Poe, would ever have uttered such sentiments as
he did as to Edward Coate Pinkney. The enlightened men of this region,
as of yours, know no north or South in literature—only one grand
Republic of letters, in which every man standeth according to the Soundness
of his heart and the strength of his understanding.' "

It will interest the public to learn that Col. Peyton is now engaged in
the composition of a work entitled: "A History of Virginia from the
Retrocession of Alexandria to the Reconstruction of the Union."
The Staunton Spectator says of this forthcoming work that "it will
cover the whole period of the Civil War and the causes which led up to
it, and that the great erudition of the author, his laborious habits and
vast research, together with his literary abilities, will make it one of the
most valuable and important books ever published in the State." The
Valley Virginian says: "Concentrating his brilliant powers on this work,
it cannot be doubted that it will be worthy of the subject and the fame
acquired by the author in his previous works. The public will await
the book with impatience. The calm, dispassionate, philosophical
character of Col. Peyton's mind, his uncommon industry and painstaking
research, his varied knowledge and graphic style, will, in our
opinion, enable him to produce an elegant and faithful history, such as
Virginia may well be proud of."

The two original settlers in the Colony of Virginia, John and Robert
Peyton, were both of the Ancient Isleham Peyton stock, which sprung
from Reginald de Malet, a nephew of William de Malet, one of the great
Barons who accompanied William Ist to the Conquest of England, and

was his mace bearer at the battle of Hastings. From him sprung Sir
Robert Peyton de Ufford or Orford, who was summoned to Parliament
as a Baron, 1308, and was so distinguished in the wars of Edward II
and III, that he was granted the town and Castle of Orford or Ufford,
in the county of Suffolk, and also for the personal danger he incurred
in arresting Mortimer and some of his adherents in the Castle of Nottingham,
a further grant of large landed possessions. In eleventh
of Edward III, he was created Earl of Suffolk, and was sent on an embassy
to treat for peace with David Bruce, King of Scotland. In the
same year he was with the Earl of Derby at the battle of Cajent. In
12th Edward III he served in Flanders and Brittany. Five years later,
he was with the Black Prince in France and at the battle of Poictiers,
and gained the highest Military renown by his skill as a leader and his
personal courage. He was one of the Founders of the order of the
garter. He died in 1369, and among other bequests leaves to his son
William, 2nd Earl of Suffolk "the sword, wherewith the King girt him
when he created him Earl; as also his bed, with the Eagle entire, and
his summer vestment powdered with Leopards." (See Froissart vol. I,
ch. 237.)

A long line of Peytons sprung from this source namely, 1st, the Peyton's
of Isleham, the Peyton's of Knowlton, the Peyton's of Doddington,
among whom there were many men conspicuous for their talents and
virtues—one of whom was the eminent lawyer Robert Peyton, Lord
Chief Justice of Ireland time of Henry III. Sir John Peyton M. P.,
time of Edward I. Gen. Sir Robert Peyton, time of Henry VIII. Sir
Edward Peyton, author of the History of the Reign of James I. and
other works. Thomas Peyton, of Lincolns Inn, author of "The Glasse
of Time," published 1620, and which is by many regarded as the original
of Paradise Lost. Gen. Sir John Peyton, Governor of Ross Castle.
Gen. Sir John Peyton, Governor of Jersey and author of a code of
Norman-Jersey laws. Gen. Sir Henry Peyton, Governor of Galway,
time of Queen Anne. Sir Henry Peyton, member of the London Co.
for the settlement of Va. Sir Sewster Peyton, a Cabinet Minister
in the reign of Queen Anne, and others too numerous to mention. The
family is, in 1889, represented in England by Sir Algernon Peyton,
Baronet of Doddington, late of the 11th Hussars, born 1855, whose
brother, Revd. Thomas Thornhill Peyton M. A., who married a daughter
of Sir William Styles, of Wateringburg Place, Kent. is Rector of
Isleham, a benefice which has been in the Peyton family over 400 years.
The parish church was begun to be rebuilt 17th year of Edward IV.
(A. D. 1479) and is in 1889 in perfect preservation. In the Chancel
and the Peyton Chapel many members of the family are interred,

over whose remains fine monuments have been erected—one of these
bears this quaint inscription:

John Peyton settled in Westmoreland County, Virginia in 1664, and
Robert Peyton in Gloucester County in 1660, and through the
researches of Dr. Robert A. Brock, the accomplished Secretary of the
Virginia Historical Society we are enabled to give the following extracts
from the Land registry office, at Richmond, Virginia, showing the
early date at which several members of the family possessed themselves
of Virginian lands, viz,

Henry Peyton, of Acquia, Westmoreland County, took up in that
county 400 acres of land, Nov. 1st 1657.

Col. Valentine Peyton, of Nominy, County Westmoreland, took
up in that county 1600 acres July 20th 1662.

Major Robert Peyton, took up in New Kent County, April 23rd 1681,
1000 acres.

Thomas Peyton, of Gloucester entered June 16th, 1758, 150 acres.

The prominent members of the American family not heretofore
mentioned have been Yelverton Peyton, Lieut U. S. A. 1794; Garnett
Peyton, Capt. U. S. A. 1799, a son of John R. Peyton, of Stony Hill,
Stafford County, Virginia who was styled in Virginia, "the first gentleman
of his day." Francis Peyton M. D. Surgeon U. S. A. 1799; Robert
Peyton Capt. U. S. A. 1812. James R. Peyton Capt. U. S. A. 1813,
Col. Harry Peyton, of Revolutionary fame and the ancestor of Col.
John B. Baldwin, Mrs. A. H. H. Stuart, Mrs. James M. Ranson, Mrs.
R. T. W. Duke and others, John S. Peyton Capt. U. S. A. 1813; Bernard
Peyton, Capt. U. S. A. 1813, adjutant General of Virginia and
in 1840-44 Post-Master at Richmond, Va. Richard H. Peyton, Capt.
U. S. A. 1839 who died the same year in Florida, a distinguished
Graduate of West Point, Balie Peyton M. C. 1835-1837, appointed
Sec'y of War 1841, but declined, Colonel of 5th Louisiana regiment in

the Mexican war, and aid de camp to Gen. Worth and voted a
sword of honor by the State of Louisiana, in 1848-52 Minister Plenipotentiary
to Chili and later U. S. Attorney for California. He was a
splendid soldier, an eloquent speaker and was called the "Silver tongued
orator." Col. John Peyton Commisary-General of the Revolutionary
army elected by the Legislature of Va. 1779; Jos. H. Peyton M. C.
for Tennessee, Samuel O. Peyton M. C. for Kentucky. Judge E. G.
Peyton Chief Justice of Mississippi, an eminent lawyer, Col. Charles L.
Peyton, Greenbrier Co., W. Va. a son of Craven Peyton, of Monteagle,
Albermarle Co. Va., by his wife Jane Jefferson, dau. of Randolph Lewis,
whose mother was a sister of President Jefferson, Robert Ludwell Yates
Peyton, a Missouri State Senator and Senator for Missouri in the Confederate
Congress, a colonel in the C. S. A. and a man of such remarkable
talents and such rare oratorical powers that he was styled the
"Patrick Henry of the West." He graduated B. L. of Va. 1843 and
died in 1862, from disease contracted in the field, at the siege of Vicksburg,
Mississippi. Col. Charles S. Peyton, of W. Va., who lost
his arm at the battle of Manassas, but as soon as his wound was healed
reassumed his old command, and participated in nearly all the battles
of the eastern theatre of the war—leading his regiment (the 19th Virginia),
in the celebrated charge of Pickett's brigade at Gettysburg and
when every field officer was killed or shot down, took command and led
the remnant of that heroic force, with Lee's retreating army, to Virginia.
He is a noble specimen of humanity, a man sans peur et sans
reproche.

Col. William Madison Peyton, long the representative of Roanoke
and Botetourt in the General Assembly of Virginia, the only son by
the first marriage of Hon. John Howe Peyton, a man endowed
with great vigor and vivacity of intellect, purity of heart and sweetness
of disposition. His master passions were freedom of thought and
love of country. It is the opinion of those who knew him best, and
the high and commanding influence he exerted in his day, that but
for his continued ill-health, which largely destroyed his physical and
mental energies, he would have played a great part in the affairs of his
country. Disease caused him to spend his time in study, when he could
study, at his country seat in Roanoke, a quiet only occasionally
interrupted by the part he was compelled by the importunities of his
friends and neighbors to take in public affairs as a magistrate, a director
in public companies and a delegate to the Legislature. Oftener
than once has it been remarked of him that he was a fine illustration
of the truth of the remark that the "world knows nothing of its greatest
men."

The Peytons are extensively connected with the leading families of

the State, such as the Brokenboroughs, Baldwins, Bernards, Conways,
Carters, Clarks, Fitzhughs, Greens, Garnetts, Harvies, Harrisons, Jeffersons,
Lewis', Masons, Munfords, Madisons, Moncures, Prestons,
Randolphs, Stuarts, Scotts of Fauquier, Skipwiths, Tuckers, Washingtons,
Woodvilles and Wallaces, and of that vast ramification of
families traced out by the late Orlando Brown in his Memoranda of
the Preston family.