Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/345

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PROMINENT PERSONS


301


I


was postmaster from 1854 until the breaking cut of the civil war. As a northern man, he was viewed with suspicion, and was ar- rested by a party of citizens and taken to Fredericksburg. At the instance of southern friends there, he was released by Judge Braxton. He was again arrested, brought tc trial, and acquitted. Having lost his property and post-ofifice, he went to Rich- mond, and was appointed to a clerkship in the office of the Confederate medical direc- tor, serving until 1864, when he went to Charlotte, North Carolina. There he was teacher to the sons of Confederate officers and refugees until the surrender of Gen. Lee in April, 1865. He then retired to a form in Culpeper county, and later resumed v.ork as a teacher. In 1876 he became headmaster of Ridley Hall, a church school at Fenton, Michigan. Three years later he returned to Richmond and established the rirentsville Seminary, which he closed in 1888, his wife having died. He afterwards became principal of Creswell Academy, in A\'ashington county. North Carolina. He married, in August, 1863, Julia .\. Care, whose mother was a sister of William F. G. Garnett. and related to Muscoe Russell Gar- rett and Senator R. M. T. Hunter.

Minor, Virginia Louisa, born in Gooch- land county, Virginia. March 27, 1824; was educated at a young ladies' academy in Charlottesville," Virginia. She married, in 1843, Francis Minor, a relative of the same name, and removed in 1846 to St. Louis, Missouri. During the civil war she aided the sick and wounded soldiers in the camps and hospitals around St. Louis. She origin- ated the woman suffrage movement in Mis- souri in 1866, organized the Woman Suf- frage Association in 1867, and presided


over the convention of woman suffragists in St. Louis in 1869. She was the first woman in the United States in the nineteenth cen- tury to claim sutTrage as a right, and not as a favor. With this end in view, in 1872 she brought the matter before the courts, taking it finally to the United States supreme court.

Gannaway, William Trigg, born in Wythe count} . \'irginia, June 10, 1825. He gradu- ?ted at Emory and Henry College in 1845, and for nine years afterwards had charge of bloyd Institute, in Virginia, and the follow- ing three years held a similar position at Germantown, North Carolina. In 1857 he became professor of Latin and Greek in Trinity (North Carolina) College, and was .-onnected with the institution until its re- moval to Durham, North Carolina, in 1892. The first year he taught Greek and phil- osophy ; and after this time Latin, adding in turn. Greek, history and French. In De- cember. 1863, he became president pro tern., on the resignation of President Craven. With the exception of the University of North Carolina, this was perhaps the only important institution of learning that was kept open during the entire period of the civil v.ar, and Professor Gannaway encountered great difficulties in maintaining it. The military needs of the Confederacy ha-d so narrowed the teaching force, that he was obliged to teach all classes in Latin, Greek and French ; while he also had to provide for the boarding of the students in years v.'hen provisions were scarce and inordi- nately expensive. In 1864 girls were ad- mitted to the school. It inanaged to sur- \ive the war period, but suspended at the time of Gen. Lee's surrender, in April, 1865, but was revived in the fall of the same year.