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Callaway Furlow Harris Irvine Jones Tucker

Obituary of James Callaway, Macon, Georgia.

The Veteran of June contained merely a brief announcement of the death on April 10 at Macon, Ga., of James Callaway. For a man to whom the entire South is so largely indebted for keeping the record straight such a brief announcement in insufficient. For his manly defense of the truth of history, so far as it relates to the South, the Confederate soldier, and to the immortal Davis, Lee, Jackson, and other chieftains under the Stars and Bars, and his homage to the women of the South he deserves a monument to his memory.

James Callaway was born in Washington, Wilkes County, Ga., on January 1, 1847, his parents being Merrill P. and Mary Irvine Callaway. His maternal grandfather was Christopher Irvine, of Bedford County, Va, who married Louisa Tucker, daughter of Isaiah Tucker, of Amherst County, in that State, and who enlisted in the 5th Virginia Regiment on February 15, 1776, and became a captain in the regiment. Christopher Irvine moved to Washington, Ga., in 1794, and the old plantation on which he lived is still in the Irvine family. An early ancestor, Christopher Irvine, M. D., was a physician general and histiographer for Scotland and held the same position for King Charles II, while an earlier ancestor fell in the battle of Flodden Field in 1513.

Mr. Callaway's unquestioned patriotism and literary ability were inherited traits. After preperation for a college course at LaGrange he entered Mercer University when that institution was at Penfield in the year 1862. The following year when he was sixteen years of age, he left college to enlist in the 3d Georgia Reserves, Col. Charles Jenkins Harris, the commander of his company being Capt. Dunwody Jones. His first service was as a guard at Andersonville Prison, and from there he was transferred to Charleston, S. C., where he was quartermaster sergeant. Contracting typhoid fever, he was sent home to recuperate.

The close of the war found him ambitious to complete his education, and to this end he reentered Mercer and graduated in the class of 1868, studying under such able teachers as Dr. J. J. Brantley, Dr. Shelton P. Sanford, Dr. Joseph E. Willet, and President N. M. Crawford. After graduating he read law in Americus, and it was in that city that he married, on November 1, 1871, Miss Viera Flewellen Furlow, daughter of Timothy Mathews and Margaret Holt Furlow.

At one time he gave up the study of law to engage in farming, at which he was successful, utlizing his spare hours in writing and study. When the health of his wife necessitated a change he gave up the farm and began editorial work on the Albany News and Advertiser. Later he accepted a position on the Macon Daily Telegraph to do editorial work. In later years he conducted a column on that paper under the head of "Observation and Comment," a column read and enjoyed daily with interest wherever that paper circulated. His range of information was remarkable, as was his intimate acquaintance with the brainiest men of the day. Few men had such a list of able and brilliant correspondents or as many friends. His scrapbook was a treasure and his letter file an inexhaustable mine of information making history.

Those who worked with him and about him in the Telegraph office, from proprietor to printer, loved him as a father. Always courteous, never without a kind word and pleasant greeting for everybody, there was gloom in the office when it became known that in January last his health was such to force him to leave Macon for Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, where he died in April.

The thousands of readers of his popular column will miss his brave words for the Confederacy and those who fought for it and for all that stands for truth.

[Bridges Smith.]


SOURCE: Confederate Veteran Magazine, July, 1920.


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