Col. M. V. McKibben

The subject of this sketch was born in Butts county and has lived here all through his eventful life.  He was one of those unfortunate young men who was called upon to go to battle just at the time he should have been getting an education.  He joined the Bailey volunteers at his country's call, and lived through the war in spite of Yankee bullets, having been the recipient of three of them.  He was first wounded at Lost Mountain, Tenn., again at Atlanta, Ga., and again at Franklin, Tenn.  He was always shot from the front.

When the war was over he came to his father's home and being so crippled it was painful even to move, he tied his hand to the plow-handle and made a very good crop.  What he made he undertook to use in securing an education and found it perfectly inadequate; consequently he borrowed enough to get through college at Athens.  Every dollar was paid back promptly.  He was admitted to the bar in 1871.  He has kept a boy in school ever since that time, and at some periods has kept two at once in college.  The boys he sent to school went well dressed, but Col. McKibben entered Athens with patched trousers.  He started out with this motto: "Never deceive a client or disappoint a man in a promise," and he has lived up to his motto.  

Col. McKibben pays more tax today than any man in Butts County, and while he owns considerable town property, he is the most extensive farmer in the county.  Col. McKibben's method of business is strict.  He keeps all his promises and he expects other people to do the same thing; but notwithstanding this, Col M. V. McKibben never drives a man to the wall, for he is lenient with those who would it they could, and rescues those who could if they would.  He has proven himself a patriot this________, for so many who would pay if they could, and who own Col. McKibben, have been spared the mortification of being crowded.  It is common for a man who owes everybody to advocate leniency, but for a man who everybody owes, figuratively, to rise above self interest, and looking round and seeing the present condition of the country, proclaim: "I have sued no one and will sue no one unless he attempts to trifle with me".  This is no hearsay - we heard him say so.  He says Jackson and Butts county shall stand and it is fortunate for Jackson and Butts county that we have such men as Col. Martin Van Buren McKibben in it.  When we told him we were going to write this sketch, he said: "Well, don't say anything about me in it, but say all about Jackson and Butts County."

Of course we have only touched the high places, as it were; his life in Butts county is an open book

Middle Ga. Argus - December 1894

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