Northumberland-Richmond County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Hinton, John Braxton 1851 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/vafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.rootsweb.com/~archreg/vols/00001.html#0000031 February 22, 2008, 8:01 am Author: Leonard Wilson (1916) JOHN BRAXTON HINTON IT is doubtful if any equal area in the world has ever produced so many strong men in the same length of time as Tidewater, Virginia, has given to the world during the last three hundred years. The pages of American history are lustrous with the deeds of these men-soldiers and sailors, merchants and bankers, lawyers, doctors and clergymen, legislators, judges and pioneers. In every field of human endeavor they have made their mark. No other section of our country has been so purely English, unless it might be the eastern half of Massachusetts during its first hundred years of settlement. At least 95 per cent, of these Virginians are of pure English descent. Among the early settlers of Tidewater were the Hintons, descendants of the ancient English family of Hintons, settled for centuries in Shropshire and Berkshire, England-the original seat of the family appearing to have been at Hinton, in Shropshire. The family has certainly been identified with Virginia since 1623-for, in that year, John and Elias Hinton were living near Jamestown. During the next thirty years quite a number of the Hintons came to Virginia. In 1634 appears Sir Thomas Hinton, who was a member of the Governor's Council, and was then a man of sixty. Samuel Matthews, who later became Governor of Virginia, married a daughter of this Sir Thomas Hinton. In 1635, two Hintons, both bearing the given name of William, came over-one, aged twenty-five, in the ship "Speedwell;" the other, aged twenty, in the ship "Thomas and John." Another William came over in 1636; John in 1642; Farrar Hinton in 1650; another Thomas came in 1651 under the patronage of Palmer Hinton, who was already in the Colony and the date of whose coming is unknown. For three hundred years the Hinton family has been conspicuous in the medical profession. Sir John Hinton was physician to both Charles I and Charles II. After the restoration, Charles II showed the loyal physician the same base ingratitude which he showed to every one else, and the old doctor fell on evil days. His son, Thomas Hinton, an enterprising young man, emigrated to America in 1665 and settled in Baltimore, where he became the founder of a family. The Petersburg branch of the family has furnished an eminent physician in the person of Dr. John Robert Hinton, who died in 1890; and contemporary with him was Dr. John Henry Hinton, who was located in New York City, and one of the eminent medical men of the last century. In the Revolutionary War, the Virginia roster gives the names of John, John, Jr., Lewis, Spencer and William Hinton as soldiers in the Revolutionary Army. After that War there came a western movement of some branches of the Hinton family, and in a few years they were found west of the Alleghenies, and a little later in Kentucky there appeared a strong branch of the family, all descended from these Virginia Hintons. The family has given name to the town of Hinton in West Virginia, so that both in the old country and in the new the family name is preserved in a locality. To this ancient family belongs Captain John Braxton Hinton, of Reedville, who was born at Lara, Richmond County, Virginia, on March 23, 1851, son of George Crowther and Margaret Ann (Brown) Hinton. George C. Hinton was a contractor and house builder. Captain Hinton was educated in the private country schools, and developed that taste for the sea which is almost inborn in the youth of that section. In his young manhood he became a sailor in the coasting trade, principally up and down Chesapeake Bay, which career he followed for twenty years, and in which he gained a substantial measure of success. Retiring from the sea, he engaged in mercantile pursuits, in farming, in the lumber business, and in banking, and has met with an unusual degree of success. He is now recognized over a large section as an able financier. In addition to his personal and private interests, he is, at the present time, President of, and a Director in, the Peoples Bank of Reedville. Of kindly disposition and liberal views, it was an easy matter for him to become interested in the fraternal institutions which have been such a marked feature of our day, and he is affiliated with a number of these, including the Masonic Lodge of Heathsville (of which he is Treasurer), the Knights of Pythias and Odd Fellows at Reedville, the Junior Order of United Americans at Fairport; and is a member of the Fairfield Baptist Church. Captain Hinton was married at Fairmount, Maryland, on February 12, 1879, to Anna Augusta Crosswell, born at Marion, Maryland, on October 4, 1857, daughter of Henry Smith and Nancy Stephens (Chelton) Croswell. Captain and Mrs. Hinton have reared a splendid family of children, and if the parents had never done anything else, this alone would have made their lives a success. These children deserve special mention: Mabel Chelton Hinton, who follows by choice the occupation of teaching, is a graduate of the Maryland State Normal School of Baltimore. Anna Laura Hinton married John Franklin Shackelford, and they have two children: John Hinton Shackelford and William Cook Shackelford. Beulah Margaret Hinton, a graduate of the Maryland State Normal School of Baltimore, is (like her elder sister) engaged in teaching. Lottie Maynard Hinton, a graduate of the Western High School of Baltimore, married Marion Lawrence White, and they have one son, Marion Lawrence White, Jr. John Roland Hinton, who was for three years a student at William and Mary College, is a merchant by occupation. He married Miss Elizabeth Cockrel Reed, of Reedville, Virginia. George Henry Hinton, who also studied at William and Mary College, is a graduate of the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Maryland and is by occupation a pharmacist. He is at this time unmarried. Richard Howard Hinton attended the Cluster Springs Academy, at Cluster Springs, Va., and is now engaged in the lumber business. James William Hinton, the youngest of the family, after passing through the Cluster Springs Academy, entered the University of Virginia, in which he is now a student. Captain Hinton's life has been spent in the section where he was born. He has been a man of constructive character, a developer and a citizen of high type. In every relation of life, he has stood always for an undeviating integrity in business, and for the highest standard in the social relations of life. He has illustrated in his own person the virtues of a stock which has been contributing good citizens to the British Empire and the American Republic for centuries; and through his fine family of four daughters and four sons is passing on to the next generation a contribution to the citizenship of his State and country in which any man might take just pride. The Coat of Arms of the Berkshire and Shropshire Hintons, which was the parent stock from which nearly all the families of this name are descended, is described as follows: "Per fesse indented sable and argent six fleurs-de-lis counter-changed. "Crest: An eagle's leg erased and circled by a serpent proper." Additional Comments: Extracted from: MAKERS OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHIES OF LEADING MEN OF THOUGHT AND ACTION THE MEN WHO CONSTITUTE THE BONE AND SINEW OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY AND LIFE VOLUME II By LEONARD WILSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ASSISTED BY PROMINENT HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS Illustrated with many full page engravings B. F. JOHNSON, INC. CITY OF WASHINGTON, U. S. A. 1916 Copyright, 1916 by B. F. Johnson, Inc. Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/northumberland/photos/bios/hinton45gbs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/northumberland/bios/hinton45gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/vafiles/ File size: 8.3 Kb