Dr. James Calloway, Physician of Wilkesboro, NC

Wilkesboro Witness, Wilkesboro, North CarolinaThursday Morning, February 6th, 1879

DIED CALLOWAY - On the 25th of December A D 1878, at his residence in Wilkesboro, in the seventy-second year of his age, Dr. James Calloway (Elijah, Thomas, Jr., Thomas, Joseph Callaway).

Dr. Calloway's life and character were too well known and valued for his friends to be satisfied with a simple announcement of his death. He was born in Ashe County, North Carolina, in the year 1806. Little is known by the writer of his ancestry or family connections, only that he was a grand-nephew of Daniel Boone, of Kentucky notoriety of which connection he often spoke with peculiar pleasure. (Editor's Note - There was no direct relationship between Dr. James Calloway and Daniel Boone. He was first cousin, twice removed of Flanders Callaway who married Jemima Boone, Daniel Boone's daughter.)

Later in life he was a representative of Ashe County in the Legislature of North Carolina. Almost contemporary with this event he became a practicing physician and soon after removed to Wilkesboro, where he at once obtained a large and extensive practice, which he retained and is well known in this and adjacent counties as a physician. At that time, the writer has been informed,there was no other regularly bred physician in the whole extent of country between Statesville, North Carolina and Wytheville, Virginia; hence his practice embraced in its range a territory which now constitutes seven counties in North Carolina. His practice was consequently a very laborious one. He was sometimes called even to Virginia.

He was married twice. His first wife, Mary L. Carmichael, was a daughter of Capt. Abner Carmichael and sister of L. B. Carmichael, a name familiar to the bar of this judicial circuit, and to his contemporaries in the Legislature of North Carolina, of which he was repeatedly a member. From this marriage were born three children, only two of whom survive - Mrs. Daniel W. Adams (Mary Virginia Calloway), and Mrs. John R. Bowie (Frances Caroline Calloway).

His last wife, who is now living was Miss Annie Perry Yeakle, a native of Maryland but residing at the time of their marriage, with an Aunt in Wilkes County. From this marriage were born six children, four of whom are living.

In former years Dr. Calloway was an earnest member of the Whig Party, and though rarely an aspirant to office he extended very extraordinary influence in its behalf. It is thought that no other man in the County influenced and controlled so many votes as he did.

He was most violently opposed to secession but in 1861 he was elected to the convention, voted for the Ordinance of Secession, strenuously supported it during the war and, so far as the writer can learn was never heard to utter a regret for the vote which he then gave. Since the war, for reasons which he deemed satisfactory, he has taken very little part in politics, only giving a silent vote in behalf of the conservative principles and men. There were many of us whose affairs were embarrassing and complicated and owing to the legislative enactments during and since the war, they have continued complicated.

Owing to these enactments the war left him very much embarrassed though owning a large property in North Carolina and in the Western States. As his greatest interests lay west of the Mississippi river he deemed it necessary to remove to Kansas in 1870. His health, however, failing he remained in that state only two years and returned to Wilkesboro where he resided till his death.

The common judgement of those who knew Dr. Calloway well is that he was a man of extraordinary natural strength of mind sharpened and improved by extensive professional and business associations and of an inflexible purpose in the prosecution of his aims. He had collected a vast amount of traditionary matter connected with the war of the revolution and hence was generally interesting in such subjects, and especially useful to those entitled to pensions as soldiers, or their descendants. He was for thirty years of his life a member of the Episcopal Church, whose ministrations in his sick room during his long and painful illness gave him his greatest comfort.

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