Major General Evarts Walton Opie

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Genealogy of Major General Evarts Walton Opie

This genealogical account was constructed from the family information contained in the biography below. No relationships or life facts have been added from outside sources.

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Evarts Walton Opie was born September 13, 1893, in Staunton, Virginia, the youngest of twelve children of John N. Opie and Ida Fletcher Opie. The biography identifies his brothers Hierome Lindsay Opie, the Rev. Thomas F. Opie, D.D., and John N. Opie Jr. John N. Opie Jr. had a son, John N. Opie 3rd, and a daughter, Eleanor, who married Brigadier General Herbert B. Loper.

In 1925 Evarts Walton Opie married Elizabeth Holmes Kerr, a descendant of an early Augusta family. Her father was Hugh H. Kerr. Evarts and Elizabeth Opie had two children, Sara Elizabeth Opie and Evarts Walton Opie Jr.

Family outline

• Evarts Walton Opie
  • Father: John N. Opie
  • Mother: Ida (Fletcher) Opie
  • Brothers identified in the account:
    • Hierome Lindsay Opie
    • Rev. Thomas F. Opie, D.D.
    • John N. Opie Jr.
      • Son: John N. Opie 3rd
      • Daughter: Eleanor, wife of Herbert B. Loper
  • Wife: Elizabeth Holmes Kerr
    • Father: Hugh H. Kerr
  • Children:
    1. Sara Elizabeth Opie
    2. Evarts Walton Opie Jr.

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Source

This biography appeared in History of the Shenandoah Valley: Family and Personal Records, Volume III (Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1952), pages 19-20.

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Verbatim biography

The following is a faithful transcription of the original biography. OCR errors have been corrected against the printed page images, but the original wording, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and factual claims have not been rewritten.

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MAJOR GENERAL EVARTS WALTON OPIE —In another biography in this history, the founding of the Opie family of Virginia is recorded. The family has been prominent in Virginia affairs in every generation, its interests up to the 20th Century having been principally agrarian, though it has produced lawyers, legislators, doctors, ministers, and soldiers in the republic’s various wars.

Not until the present generation did any of the Virginia Opies turn to journalism. The late Hierome Lindsay Opie, whose name appeared in nearly every generation of the family in this country, founded “The Evening Leader” in Staunton in 1904. Associated with him were two brothers, one the Rev. Thomas F. Opie, D.D., now a retired Episcopal minister of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and the other the subject of this sketch, Major General Evarts Walton Opie. The senior member of this trio appears in another biography in this volume. He was retired from the Virginia National Guard with the rank of brigadier general and died in 1943. An older brother, the late John N. Opie, Jr., made his home in Baltimore, Maryland, and his son, John N. Opie, 3rd, was graduated from the United States Naval Academy and is a captain in the United States Navy, his daughter Eleanor being the wife of Herbert B. Loper, Brigadier General, Corps of Engineers, United States Army.

A younger brother of John N. Opie, Dr. Thomas Opie, also moved to Baltimore early in life, becoming chief surgeon at John Hopkins and founding the numerous Opie family of Maryland.

The present head of the Opie clan in Virginia was born in Staunton on September 13, 1893, the youngest of twelve children of John N. and Ida (Fletcher) Opie, descendant of a Scotch Presbyterian family which also settled in this country in early colonial times. He was educated in Staunton public schools and the Staunton Military Academy, of which he was an honor graduate. Having started work with his older brother’s newspaper when it was launched in 1904 and having worked at journalism in after-school hours, he entered it as a full-time calling in 1911, and has advanced through practically all newspaper positions to that of publisher of “The Evening Leader” and “The News-Leader”, the latter a morning daily, being a combination of “The Morning Leader”, established in 1906, and “The Daily News” (1893), which merger was effected in 1919.

Under the Opies the Staunton newspapers have been operated as community institutions with the motto, “The public interest first”. They have taken the lead in innumerable progressive undertakings, and their successive publishers and members of their staffs have been active supporters or leaders in every project for the advancement of the Staunton and Augusta area, the publishers’ civic interests and work reaching out into regional, state and national fields. “The Leader” papers, wholly independent of political or other obligations which sometimes affect newspaper policies, are trusted and influential, and stand high in Virginia journalism, in which they have been given numerous awards for excellence.

In 1907, Evarts Walton Opie enlisted in the National Guard, and in 1911 was commissioned a first lieutenant of infantry. He served as such on the Mexican border during the troubles of 1916, and in 1917, as the United States entered World War I, he resigned and accepted a commission in the Regular Army, rising within a few months to the grade of captain of cavalry. In 1919 he served in France under the United States Liquidation Commission. Returning in 1920, he resigned from the army and returned to the Staunton newspapers, and to a National Guard commission as captain. Mobilization prior to World War II found him a colonel in command of the 116th Infantry, Virginia National Guard, and a graduate of the army’s Command and General Staff College. He continued in command of this famous regiment throughout its expansion to war strength and during its period of training for combat overseas. He was promoted to brigadier general just as his regiment embarked for the European theater and was assigned to the training of combat replacements, some one hundred and fifty thousand of whom came under his supervision. The 116th Infantry and its Virginia combat teammate, the 111th Field Artillery Battalion, moved on to fame in sanguinary fighting in France and Germany, having been picked to spearhead the landing, abreast of the 16th Infantry, on Omaha Beach in Normandy.

General Opie retired at his own request in 1946, with the rank of major general. He was awarded the Virginia Distinguished Service Medal for his expansion and training of the only Virginia military units to see combat in World War II, for his training of other combat troops, and for distinguished service covering forty years.

Journalism and soldiering have been only two of many interests of the youngest of the Opie brothers. An active Episcopal churchman, he has served his church as vestryman and warden, diocesan council delegate and diocesan director, president of his parish laymen’s league and twice president of the diocesan league, director of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, men’s Bible teacher, and lay reader. He has served or is serving as director or officer of numerous community organizations, including the American Red Cross, the American Legion, the Rotary Club, the United Service Organizations, the King’s Daughters’ Hospital, the Chamber of Commerce, and others. He is chairman of the building committee for the King’s Daughters new $2,500,000 hospital, and is serving his second term as member of the State Hospital Board, of which he was elected chairman in his first term, This board has supervision of the state’s seven mental hospitals and is engaged in a multi-million dollar construction program. He has served a number of terms as a member of the executive committee, Virginia Press Association, and as chairman of the legislative committee. General Opie is frequently called upon to represent his community’s interests in state and federal matters, and is much in demand as a public speaker.

In 1925, Evarts Walton Opie married Elizabeth Holmes Kerr, descendant of an early Augustan family. Her father, the late Hugh H. Kerr, was commonwealth’s attorney for Augusta for a quarter of a century. General and Mrs. Opie have two children: 1. Sara Elizabeth. 2. Evarts Walton, Jr.

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