Harry Ashby deButts (13 October 1895–27 August 1983), president of the Southern Railway Company (later part of Norfolk Southern Corporation), was born in Delaplane, Fauquier County, and was the son of Dulaney Forrest deButts and Emma Virginia Ashby deButts. A much-younger cousin John Dulany deButts later served as chairman of the board of American Telephone and Telegraph. Harry Ashby deButts received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the Virginia Military Institute in 1916. Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, he joined the Southern Railway Company on 6 July 1916 as a student track apprentice in a new management training program in Culpeper. Later that year deButts became a working foreman of a pick-and-shovel labor gang and soon won promotion to yard foreman in Alexandria. He was an assistant track supervisor in Strasburg when he was inducted into the United States Marine Corps as a private in June 1918. DeButts trained as a Browning heavy machine-gunner and served as an instructor at the Marine base at Quantico during the last months of World War I. By the time of his discharge in July 1919 he had been commissioned in the officer corps and promoted to first lieutenant.

DeButts returned to the Southern Railway and soon became a track supervisor. Throughout his career the company printed his name as DeButts, although he personally continued to use a lowercase d. Early in the 1920s he was transferred to Sheffield, Alabama, where he worked as a trainmaster and division superintendent. There he met Margaret Ross Blair, whom he married on 7 June 1922. They had one daughter. DeButts continued to move up the ranks and during the next fifteen years served as a superintendent in Selma, Alabama, in Macon, Georgia, in Alexandria, and in Greensboro, North Carolina. He worked as the general superintendent in Danville and after 1934 was general manager of Southern's eastern lines, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. In October 1937 deButts became vice president of operations and was instrumental in the railroad's early shift from steam to diesel locomotives. He also instituted improvements at the railroad's largest freight terminal facilities, including installation of radio communications and automated equipment to increase efficiency in the classification yards where railcars were decoupled and sorted into new outbound trains.

Elected to the railroad's board of directors in 1940, deButts became president of the Southern Railway Company on 1 January 1952. He often commented that as a child his only railroad ambition had been to be a conductor, but of his seventeen jobs with the company the closest he had ever come was being a trainmaster. He followed the lead of his predecessor in reducing the company's debt and in 1956 paid off Southern's $30 million mortgage. DeButts was credited with more than doubling the company's net income within five years. He intensified the railroad's investment in new equipment and acquired strategically located rail lines near port cities and industrial areas. He worked to develop new industries in the South, such as paper mills, to provide greater traffic on Southern's lines. The company increased its fleet of railcars and even developed its own specialty equipment. DeButts continued to emphasize mechanization of maintenance and operations in the train yards, innovation that contributed to Southern's position of leadership in the railroad industry. In 1957 deButts's peers recognized him as one of the country's Fifty Foremost Business Leaders, and Forbes cited him as an "envoy extraordinary for the New South." The Virginians of Maryland Society awarded him its medallion of honor in 1959 for his contributions beyond the state. After stepping down as president in January 1962, deButts became chairman of the board. He retired the following November and was named a director emeritus.

DeButts served as a director for other railroads, including the Florida East Coast Railway, the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad Company, and the Richmond-Washington Company. He sat on the executive committee of the Association of American Railroads, on the administrative committee of the Association of Southeastern Railroads, and on the governing board of the National Industrial Conference. He was also a director of the Transportation Association of America and a member of the Transportation Council of the United States Department of Commerce.

For many years deButts kept an apartment near the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Southern Railway Company, while continuing to maintain a home in the Fauquier County town of Upperville. He was a longtime director of the Upperville Colt and Horse Show and also a founder and board member of the Fauquier Historical Society. Active in VMI alumni affairs, he was a charter member of the VMI Foundation and a member of its board of trustees. He received its Distinguished Service Award in 1969. He also served on VMI's board of visitors for eight years, three as president. The Southern Railway Company established a scholarship in deButts's name at VMI in 1981.

DeButts's wife died on 20 September 1951, and on 7 March 1956 he married Mary Moore Howe Glascock, a widow with one son and two daughters. They did not have any children. Harry Ashby deButts died at his home in Upperville on 27 August 1983 and was buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery in that town. The Southern Railway Company named a train yard facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in his honor.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Who's Who in Railroading in North America (1946), 171 (first marriage date of 7 June 1922), Current Biography 14 (Apr. 1953): 15–17 (first marriage date of 7 June 1922), Commonwealth 26 (Mar. 1959): 29–30 (portrait), and Richard Lee Morton, comp., Virginia Lives: The Old Dominion Who's Who (1964), 259 (variant first marriage date of 22 June 1922); Birth Register, Fauquier Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); military service record questionnaire in Virginia War History Commission, Individual Service Records (Questionnaires), 1919–1924, Accession 37219, Record Group 66, LVA; Southern Railway Company Annual Reports, 1951–1961; Washington Post, 3 Dec. 1951, 26 Feb. 1956; Warrenton Fauquier Democrat, 15 Mar. 1956; Forbes (15 Nov. 1957), 38 (quotation); Burke Davis, The Southern Railway: Road of the Innovators (1985); obituaries in Richmond News Leader, 27 Aug. 1983, New York Times, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Washington Post, all 28 Aug. 1983, Warrenton Fauquier Democrat, 1 Sept. 1983, and Virginia Military Institute Alumni Review 60 (fall 1983): 46 (portraits).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Thomas R. Hyland.

How to cite this page:
Thomas R. Hyland, "Harry Ashby deButts (1895-1983)" Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2019 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=deButts_Harry_Ashby, accessed [today's date]).

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