William G. Connor, D. D., of South Carolina, was for many years a prominent minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Texas.
Ira I. Crenshaw, of Virginia, was tutor in Randolph-Macon College several years, and professor at the Female Institute, Buckingham, Va., and a minister of the Virginia Conference.
Dr. Samuel D. Saunders was professor at the Southwestern University.
Georgetown, Texas, for a number of years.
Of the class of 1843, George W. Benagh, of Virginia, first-honor man, was a professor at the University of Alabama, succeeding Dr. Landon C. Garland, his old preceptor. He died young by accidental drowning.
Edward S. Brown, of Virginia, an eminent lawyer and member of the
Virginia Legislature, is still an active, vigorous man (1897).
William H. Lawton was a faithful itinerant in the South Carolina
Conference for nearly fifty years.
Richard H. Powell was a prominent man in church and state for many years in his State (Alabama).
A number of the members of this class died in early manhood.
Coming down to my own class (1844). This class in the Freshman year numbered thirty-three. Of these only nine took degrees. Four others came in after the opening year, making total graduates thirteen.
John Lyon, of Petersburg, was the first-honor man of this class. He entered the class in the junior year, when he was in his sixteenth year. Before his entrance there were several candidates for the first honor. It was not long before their hopes began to fail. He was precocious, but his precocity was not short-lived, as it so frequently is. Mathematics, the great rock on which so many aspiring men were wrecked, was apparently a pastime with him. President Garland, a natural-born mathematician, had no mercy on men not like gifted with himself. His course was beyond the power of nine out of ten. John Lyon was the one of ten, and was head and shoulders above all the others in the class in this course, while not equal to others in other courses, but high in all. His brilliancy made him in after life a successful lawyer. He died in Washington, November, 1897, aged seventy.