The Board of Visitors 1937-38 James H. Dillard, Rector George W. Mapp
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Section 3 The Board of Visitors 1937-38 James H. Dillard, Rector George W. Mapp, Vice-Rector Homer L. Ferguson Lulu D. Metz Alvan H. Foreman A. Obici Cary T. Grayson Gabriella Page Channing M. Hall John A. Wilson Sidney B. Hall, State Superintendent Public Instruction Charles J. Duke, Jr., Secretary to the Board of Visitors The Board of Visitors 1938-39 James H. Dillard, Rector George W. Mapp, Vice-Rector J. Gordon Bohannan Lulu D. Metz Homer L. Ferguson A. Obici Alvan H. Foreman Gabriella Page Channing M. Hall John A. Wilson Sidney B. Hall, State Superintendent Public Instruction Charles J. Duke, Jr., Secretary to the Board of Visitors 139 ABOVE: William and Mary president John Stewart Bryan was an enthusiastic supporter of Leslie's plans for a fine arts department, which brought to reality Thomas Jefferson's dream of 1779 (Photo: Thomas L. Williams, Williamsburg, Virginia). 140 DICTIONARY of VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY VOLUME 2 Bland—Cannon FOR REFERENCE ONLY EDITORS Sara B. Bearss, John T. Kneebone, J. Jefferson Looney, Brent Tarter, and Sandra Gioia Treadway ASSISTANT EDITORS John G. Deal, Daphne Gentry, Donald W. Gunter, Mary Carroll Johansen, and Marianne E. Julienne THE LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA RICHMOND • 2001 141 PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE LIBRARY BOARD F. Claiborne Johnston, Jr., Chair Bobbie B. Hudson Richmond Danville Gilbert E. Butler, Jr., Vice Chair R. Chambliss Light, Jr. Roanoke Lynchburg Peter E. Broadbent, Jr. Sharon Grove McCamy Richmond Sumerduck Dylyce P. Clarke Christopher M. Marston Manassas Alexandria Louella S. Greear Franklin E. Robeson Coeburn Williamsburg Mary Ann Harmon Fran M. Sadler Richmond Ashland David H. Harpole, Sr. Wendy C. Sydnor Richmond Richmond and under the direction of Nolan T. Yelich, Librarian of Virginia Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book. Standard Book Number. ISBN 0-88490-199-8 Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. © 2001 by the Library of Virginia. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Jacket illustrations, from back left: Annabel Morris Buchanan (Library of Virginia); Israel LaFayette Butt (Library of Virginia); Mary. Virginia Ellet Cabell (Library of Virginia); David Campbell (Library of Virginia); Rosa L. Dixon Bowser (courtesy of McEva Bowser); Anthony Burns (Library of Congress); Mary Willing Byrd (Library of Virginia); Edward Nathan Calisch (courtesy of the Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives, Richmond, Virginia); and Frederic William Boatwright (Foster Collection, Virginia Historical Society). Jacket design: Sara Daniels Bowersox, Graphic Designer, Library of Virginia. 142 BRYAN, John Stewart (23 October 1871- owner and publisher of the Richmond News - October 1944), newspaper publisher and pres- Leader for the rest of his life. In 1915 Bryan ident of the College of William and Mary, was hired Douglas Southall Freeman as editor of the born at Brook Hill in Henrico County, the son of News Leader, and during the following decades Joseph Bryan (1845-1908), a wealthy industri- he supported Freeman's time-consuming histor- alist and newspaper publisher, and Isobel Lamont ical research and writing. Bryan sold the Rich- Stewart Bryan, a noted preservationist. Aided by mond Times-Dispatch in 1914, but in 1940 his the wealth that Joseph Bryan had accumulated, Richmond Newspapers, Inc., bought it back, so the family was one of the most influential in that during most of his adult life, he owned and Richmond during John Stewart Bryan's lifetime. published one or both of the city's major daily The Bryans were well educated and well read, newspapers. They were the two most influential loved to travel and write letters, and acquired papers in Virginia and, with the exception of the notable collections of art, books on Virginia, and Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, probably the best edited. literature in several languages. In 1935 Bryan Bryan was an original member of the reor- published Joseph Bryan: His Times, His Family, ganized Associated Press in 1900 and an active His Friends, a biography of his father that vividly member of the American Newspaper Publishers describes the family's elegant lifestyle and Association, of which he was secretary for fif- expresses a reverence for a romanticized view of teen years and president from 1926 to 1928. In Virginia's history that he and other family mem- 1917 he founded and helped supervise Trench bers labored to preserve. and Camp, the wartime newspaper of the Young Men's Christian Association. Following a visit A childhood accident blinded Bryan in his to England on YMCA business at the end of right eye but did not keep him from leading an World War I, Bryan went to Paris to cover the active life. Educated at Thomas H. Norwood's opening of the peace conference. In 1927 he and private school in Richmond and Episcopal High Samuel Emory Thomason, a Chicago publisher School in Alexandria, he graduated in 1893 from and his predecessor as president of the American the University of Virginia with both B.A. and Newspaper Publishers Association, bought the M.A. degrees. In 1894 Bryan began to study law Tribune of Tampa, Florida. Later that year they at the University of Virginia, but after the death purchased the Record of Greensboro, North Car- of his professor John B. Minor, he transferred to olina, and in 1928 they acquired the Chicago Harvard University, from which he graduated in Daily Journal. They sold the Chicago paper in 1897. Bryan practiced briefly in New York August 1929 and the Greensboro paper the fol- before returning to Richmond to practice with lowing year, but they remained owners and pub- Murray Mason McGuire. In 1898, as a member lishers of the Tampa Tribune until Thomason's of the Virginia State Bar Association's Commit- death in March 1944. tee on Library and Legal Literature, Bryan com- Bryan married Anne Eliza Tennant on 4 June 1903. They had one daughter and two sons, pleted an able essay on early compilations of including David Tennant Bryan, who succeeded Virginia statutes based on personal examination his father as publisher and president of Rich- of a number of rare volumes and a close reading mond Newspapers. Following the deaths of his of the historical scholarship then available. parents, John Stewart Bryan lived at the elegant In 1900 Bryan gave up the law to become a and showy new Laburnum mansion that Joseph reporter for Joseph Bryan's Richmond Dispatch, Bryan had constructed in Henrico County after a and the next year he became vice president of fire destroyed the original in 1906. The family his father's publishing company, which owned made Laburnum a center of Richmond society, the morning Richmond Dispatch and the evening and Bryan became a popular toastmaster and Richmond Leader. In 1903 the Bryans sold the after-dinner speaker. More than six feet, two Leaden acquired the Dispatch's morning com- inches tall, he cut an impressive figure and car- petitor, the Richmond Times, and merged it with ried himself with an easy dignity. Bryan had a the Dispatch to form the Richmond Times- wonderful memory and a copious stock of apt Dispatch. Shortly before Joseph Bryan's death anecdotes, literary and historical allusions, and in 1908, the family acquired the afternoon Rich- poetic references. mond News Leader, of which John Stewart Bryan then became publisher. He remained the 143 Bryan seldom participated directly in poli- tics. His views reflected the conservative, busi- During Bryan's presidency the college ness-oriented opinions of his industrialist father, made significant strides in broadening its cur- but both men disliked the machine politics char- riculum and strengthening its reputation as a lib- acteristic of the leaders of Virginia's Democratic eral arts college. The student body improved in Party, successively Thomas Staples Martin, quality, as did an enlarged faculty. Bryan bol- Claude Augustus Swanson, and Harry Flood stered the college's financial standing, reduced Byrd (1887-1966). The conservative Bryans its debt, and took responsibility for the beautifi- were occasionally at odds with the party's even cation of the campus and the planting of box- more conservative leaders. Nevertheless, Bryan wood in the sunken garden. The small and was a delegate to the Democratic National Con- underfunded School of Jurisprudence came ventions of 1920, 1924, and 1932, and in 1924 he under criticism, but alumni rallied to the school's accepted the chairmanship of Carter Glass's support, and reorganized as the School of Law, favorite-son presidential campaign. it survived to grow in size and gain in stature Bryan's influence in Richmond and Virginia beginning shortly after Bryan's death. He elim- extended to many fields but focused on the arts inated other schools, including programs in busi- and education. He helped found a short-lived ness administration, economics, education, and symphony orchestra in Richmond during the secretarial science, in order to focus on the lib- 1930s, and he was one of the first vice presidents eral arts. of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Active as Bryan continued to pursue his other varied a lay leader in the Episcopal Church, Bryan often business and professional interests and was thus attended its triennial national councils during the a part-time college president. He used adminis- 1910s and 1920s. He chaired the board of the trative practices similar to those he had followed Richmond Public Library, sat on the boards of a as a newspaper publisher, when he hired the busi- number of charitable organizations, and in 1936 ness managers and editors and gave them the and 1937 was president of the Virginia Histori- freedom to do their jobs.