David Hunter Strother was an American journalist, artist, brevet Brigadier General, innkeeper, politician and diplomat from West Virginia. Both before and after the American Civil War, Strother was a successful 19th-century American magazine illustrator and writer, popularly known by his pseudonym, "Porte Crayon". 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).
Strother during Civil War
A sketch of Col. Strother
A Storer College student, 1874. Sketch by Porte Crayon.
Berkeley Springs, West Virginia
Berkeley Springs is a town in, and the county seat of, Morgan County, West Virginia, United States, in the state's Eastern Panhandle. Berkeley Springs is also commonly used to refer to the area in and around the Town of Bath. In 1776, the Virginia Legislature incorporated a town around the springs and named it Bath. Since 1802, it has been referred to by the name of its original post office, Berkeley Springs. The population was 758 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Hagerstown–Martinsburg metropolitan area.
Town square in Berkeley Springs
The Samuel Taylor Suit Cottage overlooks the town
"Bathtub" used by George Washington
US 522 northbound and WV 9 westbound in Berkeley Springs