[661] duty when General Johnston surrendered. At the battle of Averasboro his lieutenant-colonel said of him: ‘There stands Humbert, as if the bullets were only hail stones.’ On the following day the adjutant-general of the brigade said to him: ‘Captain, if I had the authority, I would place a star upon your collar.’ At Bentonville he had charge of part of the picket line. Someone remarked: ‘The line will not stand.’ ‘Yes, it will,’ was the reply; ‘Humbert is there, and he will hold it.’ Since the war he has given his attention to farming, being president of the Farmers' alliance and of the State agricultural society. He has served two terms in the State legislature, being a member of the ‘Wallace House’ from 1876 to 1880. He was one of the chief promoters of the Atlantic, Greenville & Western railway, subsequently known as the Carolina, Knoxville & Western. For about three years he was its president. Captain Humbert was married, October 5, 1864, to Miss Margaret Emma Pooser, of Orangeburg county, S. C., daughter of Maj. George H. Pooser, a soldier of the Seminole war. The captain and his wife became acquainted when he was a student at Wofford college and she was at the Spartanburg female college. They have four living children, two sons and two daughters.
Major William Wirt Humphreys, late a prominent citizen of Anderson, and a true son of South Carolina, was a man of whom it can be truthfully said that no braver officer or more gallant soldier served on the Confederate side during the war, and no man enjoyed a wider popularity in the communtiy in which he resided. He was born in Anderson county, S. C., October 30, 1837, being the son of Rev. David Humphreys, a Presbyterian clergyman, and Rebecca (Cunningham) Humphreys, both of whom were natives of South Carolina. Major Humphreys was reared in Anderson county and received his collegiate education at Centre college, of Danville, Ky., from which he graduated in 1857. He then pursued the study of law and was admitted to the bar in 1860. He located in Anderson and had barely entered upon the practice of his profession when the war broke out. At the first call for troops he volunteered and helped to organize Company B, Fourth South Carolina regiment, of which he was elected first lieutenant. He served with
