Biography:

Cotton planter, historian, newspaper journalist, editor. Born– March 5, 1836, Society Hill, Darlington County, S.C.; moved to Marengo County with his family in 1850.  Parents– Kimbrough Cassels and Elizabeth Boykin (Witherspoon) DuBose. Never married. Education– Dayton Classical Academy; one term at South Carolina College, 1854; studied at home with private tutors. Successful cotton planter in the Canebrake area of Marengo County, 1856-61.  Served in Confederate Army Quartermaster Corps; reached rank of Lieutenant Colonel, but did not see action because of his deafness. After the War worked as a plantation manager; moved in Birmingham in 1886 and worked  as a journalist, and free-lance writer, focusing particularly on local and state historical, political, and economic affairs, publishing numerous articles in newspapers and magazines. Worked intermittently as a newspaper editor; owned a bookstore in Gadsden. Worked as an assistant at the Alabama State Department of Archives and History, 1901-07 and 1912-1917. Did  Died February 14, 1918.

Sources:

bhamwiki; Owen’s The Story of Alabama; Hoole, William Stanley, “Life of John Witherspoon DuBose” in John Witherspoon DuBose:  A Neglected Southern Historian.

Publication(s):

Alabama’s Tragic Decade. Birmingham, Ala.; Webb Book Co. 1940 (First published as a series of articles in the Birmingham Age-Herald).

General Joseph Wheeler and the Army of Tennessee. New York; Neale, 1912.

Jefferson County and Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham, Ala.; Teeples & Smith, 1887.

John Witherspoon DuBose: A Neglected Southern Historian, with a Selection of His Uncollected Essays. Edited by William Stanley Hoole.  University:  Confederate Publishing Company, 1983.

The Life and Times of William Lowndes Yancey. Birmingham, Ala.; Roberts & Sons, 1892.

The Mineral Wealth of Alabama and Birmingham Illustrated. Birmingham, Ala.; N. T. Green, 1886.

The Witherspoons of Society Hill. Hartsville, S.C.; Hartsville Pub. Co., 1910.

Contributor;

Alabama’s First Towns:  Nine Alabama Towns in 1816-1817.  University:  Confederate Publishing Co., 1982.

Papers;

A Collection of the papers of John Witherspoon DuBose is held by the W.S.Hoole Special Collections Library at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.