VIRGINIA BAPTIST SEMINARY, LYNCHBURG, VA.
At the time this sketch was written the valuation of the entire property of the institution was estimated at $40,000. The enrolment of students for 1900 numbered 250. The development of this institution has been most creditable to the Baptists of the State of Virginia.
The following compose the faculty of this institution for 1896:
Prof. Gregory W. Hayes, A. M., President, Prof. Bernard Tyrrell, A. M., Prof. J. M. Arter, A. M., Prof. U. S. G. Patterson, George Moore, Mrs. Mittie E. Tyler, Miss Lula E. Johnson, R. Lee Hemmings, Lewis W. Black, Miss Carrie L. Callaway, Walter W. Johnson, Miss Minnie Norvell.
The chairman of the Board of Managers is Rev. R. Spiller; secretary, Rev. P. F. Morris.
Rev. P. F. Morris, D. D., was the first president of the Seminary, but on account of failing health he resigned the position before the institution had been completed.
PROF. GREGORY W. HAYES, A. M.
When President G. W. Hayes was appointed to take charge of the work, he had to start under many disadvantages, a depleted treasury on the part of the Baptist State Convention, and with no available sources from which financial aid could readily be procured. By his zeal and enterprise a large building now crowns one of the most beautiful hills in the vicinity of Lynchburg.
Prof. Gregory W. Hayes was born of slave parents in Amelia county, Va., September 8, 1862. He graduated from Oberlin, one of the first institutions of learning in the State of Ohio, in the class of '88 and was elected to the chair of pure mathematics in the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, which position he held for three years. He was the first president of the National Baptist Educational Convention for the United States and was commissioner-in-chief from Virginia for the Southern Inter-State Exposition. He was elected president of Virginia Seminary in 1891.