David Hunter Strother

David Hunter Strother (September 26, 1816 – March 8, 1888) was an American journalist, artist, brevet Brigadier General, innkeeper, politician and diplomat from West Virginia. Both before and after the American Civil War (in which he was initially a war correspondent), Strother was a successful 19th-century American magazine illustrator and writer, popularly known by his pseudonym, "Porte Crayon" (French, ''porte-crayon'': "pencil/crayon holder"). He helped his father operate a 400-guest hotel at Berkeley Springs, which was at the time the only spa accessible by rail in the mid-Atlantic states. A Union topographer and nominal cavalry commander during the war, Strother rose to the rank of brevet Brigadier General of Volunteers, and afterward restructured the Virginia Military Institute, as well as serving as U.S. consul in Mexico (1879–1885). Provided by Wikipedia