David Hunter Strother House

David Hunter Strother was born in Martinsburg, Va in 1816. Strother was taught art under Samuel Morse, the telegraph inventor, in the mid 1830s and studied art in Italy and New York City in the 1840s. Strother's knowledge of drawing helped him become a topographer where he served in the Federal Army under different staff generals during the Civil War. Strother reached the rank of Brigadier General and throughout his military service he recorded his recollections of the war that were later published as a series in Harper's Magazine.

His career as an illustrator and an author came to a close when he was appointed Consul General to Mexico by President Hayes in 1879 and served until 1885. He returned to West Virginia and died in 1888 and is buried in Green Hill cemetery in Martinsburg, WV  that he helped design.