Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/285

 PROMINENT PERSONS

United States, filling that position until July, 1897. In 1892 he was elector-at-large on the Cleveland ticket. He belongs to the American Bar Association, and to the Vir- ginia State Bar Association. For several years Mr. Conrad was a member of the Cosmos Club of Washington, and is well known as a leader in Democratic circles in Virginia. He was married, in 1869, to Georgia Bryan Forman.

Bruce, Blanche K., born in Prince Ed- ward county, Virginia, March i, 1841, of African descent, born a slave, and received the rudiments of education from the tutor of his master's son. When the civil war be- gan he left his young master, whose com- panion he had been, and who went from A'lissouri to join the Confederate army. Bruce taught school for a time in Hannibal, Missouri, became a student at Oberlin (Ohio) College, and afterward pursued spe- cial studies at home, and after the war went to Mississippi, where he was a planter. He was sergeant-at-arms of the legislature, a member of the Mississippi levee board, sherifif of Bolivar county, in 1871-74, county superintendent of education in 1872-73, and was elected United States senator in 1875, as a Republican, and serving till March 3, 1881. He was a member of every Republi- can convention held after 1868. On May 19. 1881, he entered upon the office of regis- ter of the treasury, to which he was ap- pointed by President Garfield. In 1886 he delivered a lecture on the condition of his race entitled "The Race Problem," and one on "Popular Tendencies." He died March 17. 1898.

Stubbs, Thomas Jefferson, born in Glou- cester county, Virginia, September 14, 1841,

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son of Jefferson Washington Stubbs, for many years presiding justice of Gloucester county, and Ann W. C. Baytop, his wife; her grandfather was a captain in the revo- lutionary army. His early education was obtained in private schools and at William and Mary College, from which he graduated in i860 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and in 1869 he received the degree of Master of Arts in course. In 1882 the honorary de- gree of Doctor of Philosophy was conferred upon him by Arkansas College. At the outbreak of the civil war he joined the Con- federate army as a member of the Gloucester Artillery, served throughout the war, and v/as taken prisoner at Petersburg just be- fore the surrender, and was not released until Appomattox. In 1865 he entered the University of Virginia, and studied for one year in the academic department. He was master of the grammar school of William and Mary College in 1868-69. In the latter year he removed to Arkansas, and was for sixteen years professor of mathematics and history in Arkansas College. For two terms he was a member of the Arkansas legisla- ture. In 1888 he returned to Virginia, hav- ing been elected professor of mathematics in William and Mary College, a position which he has held ever since. For more than ten years he conducted a summer nor- mal school for the state. He is a Mason, and has been president of the Phi Beta Kappa society, the parent chapter of which is at William and Mary College. He has been commander of the Magruder Camp of Confederate Veterans at Williamsburg, Vir- ginia. On December 22, 1869, Professor Stubbs married Mary Mercer, daughter of Captain J. R. Cosnahan, of the Confederate army. She is a lineal descendant of Gen.