My Genealogy Hound

M. V. Camp, physician and surgeon of Walnut Ridge, has been a resident of Northeast Arkansas for the past twenty-one years. He was born in Bibb County, Ala., June 11, 1836, and is the son of James Camp, of South Carolina, who was one of the first to manufacture the ore into wire in the iron furnaces of Birmingham, Ala. He was married to Miss Mary Looney, of South Carolina, who died in Mississippi about the year 1870, aged eighty years. Eight girls and four boys were born to them, four of them still living. Martin Van Buren Camp was the youngest of this large family, and was reared on a farm. He had been given a liberal education at the city of Birmingham, principally at “Old Elyton,” and was the leader in Greek and Latin in his class. After his college days were over he embarked in the newspaper business at Butler, Choctaw County, Ala., and bought the plant of the Southern Democrat. This paper he edited from 1837 to 1860, and his ability pushed it to the first place among the newspapers of Alabama. It was the second paper in that State to advocate secession, and the Doctor still has copies of his first literary effort in his library at home. In 1861 he enlisted in Capt. Maner’s regiment, and was created a sergeant (Mississippi troops) and then under Col. (afterwards Maj.-Gen.) Lowry, with whom he served three months. He afterward organized a company of volunteers, with Dr. R. B. Stephens, of Tupelo, Miss., of which he was captain, while Dr. Stephens was made surgeon. The company formed part of Col. W. M. Inges’ Twelfth Regiment Mississippi Cavalry, in Gen. S. W. Ferguson’s brigade, and did excellent service all through the war. Dr. Camp came to Jonesboro, Ark., after they had disbanded, and was engaged in teaching school in Craighead County. He then attended a course of lectures at the University of Louisville, and when through moved to Gainesville, where he practiced for fourteen years. In 1885 he located in Walnut Ridge, where he has succeeded in building up a fair practice. He has no desire to accumulate a large amount of property, but believes in giving his children a good education under his own supervision, so that his money will be judiciously expended. The Doctor is a member of the Masonic and Odd Fellows’ fraternities, and of the Cross Roads Baptist Church, near Portia. He is a Democrat in politics, but has never held any public office excepting that of county examiner of public instruction, in Greene County. He was married May 2, 1860, in Sumter County, Ala., to Miss Sarah C. Sheid, of that State, a daughter of Jesse G. Sheid. Her parents had three girls and two boys born to them, one of them deceased. Those living are Lizzie I., the wife of Rev. James F. Jernigan, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and residing in Walnut Ridge; James Sheid, now studying medicine with his father; Mary Ann, who graduated in June, 1889, from the Bellevue Collegiate Institute, of Caledonia, Mo., and Alice E., at home. Mrs. Camp’s mother died July 17, 1888, aged fifty-one years. She was a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and came from what is known throughout South Carolina as the “Old Horseshoe Robinson Stock.”