Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/287

 PROMINENT PERSONS

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study in the usual text books of a law ccurse. At the beginning of the war be- tween the states, he entered the service of the Confederate army as private, and was promoted to first lieutenant; although he lost an arm at the battle of Sharpsburg, he remained at his post until the close of hos- tilities and peace was declared. He then returned to his home, and in the same year (1865) was elected sheriff of the county, which office he filled for three years, and later was elected clerk of the circuit and county courts, and so served for ten and a half years, after which he was made judge ot the county court of Lee county, by the general assembly of Virginia, and served as such for eight years. In 1901 he was elected a member of the constitutional convention and served throughout its sessions, and he was also chosen as chairman of the Demo- cratic county committee of Lee county, in which capacity he served for eight years. Judge Orr married, November 9, 1865, Patty Vcrmilliam. They were the parents <>f .^ix children.

McBryde, John McLaren, Ijorn at Abbe- A ille, South Carolina, January i, 1841, a son cf John McP>ryde and his wife, Susan Mc- Laren. He attended classical schools and studied at South Carolina College, Colum- Lia, South Carolina. The two LeContes, later eminent scientists, were among his in- structors at this institution. He then entered the University of Virginia, at which he was a student when the civil war broke out. He served in the Confederate army, but an at- tack of typhoid fever obliged him to resign, and accept a position in the Confederate treasury department, where he soon became the head of an important division of the war

tax bureau. After the war he engaged in farming and turned his attention to scientific studies, giving especial attention to agricul- tural chemistry and botany, and making ex- tensive collections of plants indigenous to the Piedmont section of the state. He was appointed professor of agriculture and bot- any at the University of Tennessee in the fall cf 1879, and there so strengthened the de- partment of agriculture, that agriculture and botany became most important features ot the institution. Upon the reorganization of South Carolina College, a chair in it was oftered Professor McBryde, which he accep- ted, and he was unanimously elected presi- dent of the college at the first meeting of the board, 1883. The college prospered greatly during the next four years, and early in 1887 the presidency of the University of Tennessee was tendered him, but this ofifer was declined. The legislature of South Carolina mcreased the appropriation for the college in the winter of 1887-88, ordered that it should be turned into a university, and at the same time made it the State Agri- cultural and Mechanical College and Ex- perimental Station. A social and political storm some time later again reduced the status of the institution to that of a small college, and the position of president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Vir- ginia, at Blacksburg, being offered him, he accepted the offer, and his services there won wide commendation, and resulted in offers from a number of institutions, the highest honor thus coming to him being his unso- licited election to the presidency of the Uni- versity of Virginia, which he declined. The degree of Doctor of Philosophy was con- ferred upon him by the LT^niversity of Ten- nessee in 1887, and that of Doctor of Laws