Brigadier-General Ellison Capers, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 5, South Carolina
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

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[914] General Hampton. Judge Whitner had eight children, five sons and three daughters. All of the sons and three sons-in-law served in the Confederate army. The sons' names are as follows: Joseph N. Jr., James H., Benjamin F., William H., and Elias Eugene. Joseph N. Jr., the eldest, served as captain of a company in the Sixth South Carolina cavalry, and was seriously wounded at the battle of Brandy Station and rendered unfit for further service. He died in 1882. James H. entered the war in 1861 as captain of Company B (afterward Company A), Palmetto Riflemen, was soon promoted major of the Fourth South Carolina regiment, went with this regiment to Virginia and was wounded at Manassas. Upon the reorganization of the army he served for a time upon the staff of Gen. Richard Anderson, known as Fighting Dick Anderson, and later he became a private in the Palmetto Sharpshooters. In 1863 he was appointed captain of a company in the Twenty-second South Carolina regiment, which he commanded to the close of the war. He was wounded and captured on the retreat from Petersburg and taken to Richmond, where he was kept until the close of the war. After the war he was a lawyer at Walhalla and Greenville, at which latter place he died in 1886. Benjamin F., the third son, was reared in Anderson, received his early education in the schools of that place, the Slabtown and Clear Springs academies of Abbeville county. He entered the South Carolina college, where he graduated in 1855; and it is worthy of mention that his father and three of his brothers, Joseph, James and William, were graduates of the same institution. Upon completing his collegiate course, Benjamin F. Whitner began the study of law with his uncle, Gen. James W. Harrison, of Anderson, was admitted to the bar in December, 1857, and began practice at once as the partner of his uncle and preceptor. He was married December 21, 1858, to Miss Anna Church, the youngest daughter of Dr. Church of Athens, Ga., who died February 6, 1876. In October, 1860, he was elected to the lower branch of the State legislature, which legislature passed the bill calling for the convention which enacted the South Carolina ordinance of secession, and Major Whitner voted for this bill. In April, 1861, while still a member of the legislature, he was appointed to the staff of Maj.-Gen. M. L. Bonham, who commanded the first 10,000 volunteers raised