Peyton C. March

Who was Peyton C. March?

Peyton Conway March was an American soldier and Army Chief of Staff.

March was the son of Francis Andrew March, considered the principal founder of modern comparative linguistics in Anglo-Saxon and one of the first professors to advocate and teach English in colleges and universities. Peyton March attended Lafayette College, where his father occupied the first chair of English language and comparative philology in the United States. In 1884, he was appointed to West Point and graduated in 1888. He was assigned to the 3rd Artillery. As a student he was a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

He married Josephine Smith Cunningham in 1891. They had a son, Peyton, Jr., who was killed in a plane crash in Texas during World War I. March AFB in Riverside, California was named in young March's honor.