The Colonial Virginian. 141
The heroic General Hugh Mercer, who fell at Princeton in 1777, and our own Richmond pioneers, James McClurg and William Foushee, both of whom rendered excellent service in the Revolution.
I may mention also Ephriam McDowell, son of James McDowell, of Rockbridge county, who was the first surgeon on record to suc- cessfully perform, in Kentucky, in 1809, the operation for extirpa- tion ol the ovary.
The list of Virginia-born physicians graduated from Edinburgh and Glasgow is a lengthy one. The earliest in preserved record were Theodrick Bland, in 1763; Arthur Lee, 1764, and Corbin Griffin, 1765. Among the subsequent names were those of McClurg, Campbell, Walker, Ball, Boush, Lyons, Gilliam, Smith, Field, Lewis, McCaw, Minor, Berkeley, Corbin, Brockenbrough, Adams, Greenhow, Archer, Dabney, Banister, and others, endeared to us in the offices of their decendants.
Nor was there deficiency in lights of the law. It may be presumed, however, that their presence would not have aided in pacifying tur- bulence among the early colonists.
Some names were impressed on the annals of Virginia in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Among them I may mention Robert Beverley, Secretary of the Colony and father of the historian; William Fitzhugh, the ancestor of those of the name in the South ; Edmund Jenings, Launcelot Bathurst, Maximilian Boush, Maximilian Robinson, William Robertson, Secretary of the Council, and William Byrd (the second of the name), of varied useful and accomplished exemplification, who was a member of the Inner Temple as well as a fellow of the Royal Society.
Early in the eighteenth century we have Sir John Randolph, of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, John Holloway, William Hopkins 4a John Clayton, Godfrey Pole, Joseph Bickley, Philip Herbert, James and Jack Power, Edward Barradall, Stevens Thomson, and John Mercer, the last the founder of a distinguished family, the compiler of an Abridgement of the Laws of Virginia, a cogent writer, and an accomplished botanist. With the luminous names of Bland, Wythe, Nicholas, Henry, Robinson, Lee, Waller, Randolph, Pendleton, Jef- ferson, Madison, Monroe, Wayles, Page, Corbin, Lyons, Tazewell, Tucker, Gary, Mason, Curie, Ronald, Harrison, and others in suc- ceeding eras you are familiar.
- 2 For sketches of them see Virginia Historical Register, Volume I,
pages 119-123.
