Important oil on canvas of William M. Byrd in original frame and condition.
See accompanying history and information on famous Mississippi Artist Cornelius
Hankins of Guntown, Mississippi.
William McKendree Byrd
Associate Justice - 1866 - 1868
Born: December 1, 1819; Perry County, Mississippi
Died: September 24, 1874; Selma, Alabama
William McKendree Byrd attended Mississippi College and then LaGrange College in Franklin County.
He graduated from the latter school in 1838. After reading law in Holly Springs, Mississippi, he
moved to Alabama and was admitted to the bar in 1841. He began practicing law in Linden and was
elected in 1851 to represent Marengo County in the state legislature. Two years later he moved
to Selma to continue his law practice.
Byrd's judicial career began in 1863, when he was elected chancellor of the middle division of
Alabama. Two years later, the legislature elected him associate justice of the Supreme Court,
and he assumed the office on January 2, 1866. He was removed from that post in 1868 as a result
of Reconstruction ligislation passed by Congress. Byrd then returned to Selma to practice law.
He died in a train wreck.
William McKendree Byrd married Mariah H. Massie, of Tennessee. They had four Children.
The Artist
Cornelius Hankins was born Juy 12, 1863, near Guntown, Itawamba County, Mississippi, the sixth of
eight children of Reberend Edward Lockee Hankins and Annie Mary (McFadden) Hankins. He contracted
smallpox as a boy after his mother cared for Confederate soldiers. As a result, he was deaf until
he was eight years old and had to be tutored at home.
He first studied art under E. M. Gardner in Nashville. Subsequently he worked with William Merritt
Chase in New York City and with Robert Henri at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts. European travel
suplemented these studies. He settle in Nashville in 1900 and was associated for a while with
George W. Chambers in the Nashville School of Art.
He painted landscapes and still lifes as well as more than a thousand portraits. At the time of his
death in Nashville in 1946, nine of his portraits were said to be in the Tennessee State Capitol, six
in the Alabama, two in the Mississippi, and one in the Louisiana capitol buildings.
Tennessee Painting the Past, Tennessee Fine Arts Center, Cheekwood, 1960.
