BALDWIN, JOHN C.
John C. Baldwin was a son of Cornelius C. Baldwin of Balcony Falls, one of the original secessionists of 1860-61. The son, who died unmarried in 1881, at the early age of thirty-four, deserves mention for his assiduous and successful efforts to educate himself. His book studies began when he was seven years old. He took up Latin at sixteen and became able to read it almost as readily as Shakespeare. He also studied Greek and French, the mathematics, and several branches of the sciences. Perhaps he was the only boy in Virginia who made himself by solitary endeavor a fine classical and English scholar, a good writer, and one of the best informed country gentlemen in the state. Mr. Baldwin was retiring, fond of home, devoted to a simple life, and he enjoyed the society of his few intimate friends. He adopted as his own this motto by Bishop Berkeley: "I had rather be master of my time than wear a diadem."
Joseph G. Baldwin, the brilliant author of "Flush Times in Alabama," is said to have been related to the Baldwin’s of Rockbridge.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)

BARCLAY, ELIHU H.
Elihu H. Barclay, almost thirty years a force in Rockbridge journalism, was a member of an old and prominent family. He was a son of Alexander T. Barclay and his third wife, Mary E. (Paxton) Barclay. The father was a son of Elihu Barclay, who married Sarah Telford. Elihu H. purchased the Rockbridge Citizen in 1873, when he was twenty-seven years old. Next year he acquired the Gazette, which he conducted until his death in 1902. The maiden name of his wife was Margaret S. Rowan.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)

BAXTER, REV. GEORGE A.
The Reverend George A. Baxter, whose name is long and honorably identified with what is now the Washington and Lee University, was born in Rockbridge in 1771. From New London Academy he came to Lexington in 1798 to fill the chair of mathematics at Liberty Hall. A year later he became rector of the academy. Two very prominent events are associated with his administration. The school was moved from Mulberry Hill to Lexington, and it was advanced from the rank of academy to that of college. As rector, and later as president, the income of Doctor Baxter was small, and he supplemented it with active labor in the Presbyterian ministry. He is remembered in our local annals as a faithful and conscientious educator and as a preacher of power and effectiveness. His wife was Anna C., a daughter of Colonel William Fleming. Their son, Sidney S., was likewise an educator of note.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)

BROCKENBROUGH, JOHN W.
John W. Brockenbrough was a native of Hanover County, where he was born December 23, 1806. After graduating from the University of Virginia, he entered the legal profession, in which he became very eminent. From 1846 until 1860 he was judge of the United States Court for the Western District of Virginia, and in this capacity none of his decisions was ever reversed. In the crisis of 1860-61, he was a secessionist, and was defeated as a candidate for the State Convention of 1861. He represented Virginia in the futile Peace Conference which sought to avert the calamity of war. He also served a term in the Confederate Congress. In 1849 Judge Brokenbrough had opened at Lexington a school of law, and when General Robert E. Lee came here as a college president, he became the head of the newly created law school in Washington College. Judge Brockenbrough was a man of very estimable qualities. He died in Lexington, February 21, 1877.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)

BROOKE, JOHN MERCER
Brooke, John Mercer, naval officer, inventor, scientist, was born Dec. 18, 1826, in Tampa, Fla. In 1847 he graduated from Annapolis; and while in service at the naval observatory in Washington he invented the deep sea sounding apparatus, which has since come into general use. He was the inventor of the Brooke gun; and designed the Merrimac. In 1866-99 he was professor of physics at the Virginia military academy. He died in 1906 in Lexington, Va.
[Herringshaw’s National Library of American Biography: Contains Thirty-five Thousand Biographies of the Acknowledged Leaders of Life and Thought of the United States, by William Herringshaw, 1909 – Transcribed by AFOFG]

BROOKS, JOHN M.
Brooks, John M., soldier, educator, was born in 1820. He designed the ram Merrimac; and thus revolutionized marine warfare. He is professor emeritus of physics in the Virginia military institute at Lexington, Va.
[Herringshaw’s National Library of American Biography: Contains Thirty-five Thousand Biographies of the Acknowledged Leaders of Life and Thought of the United States, by William Herringshaw, 1909 – Transcribed by AFOFG]

BROWN, JOHN
John Brown, the first resident minister in Rockbridge, came in 1753 in response to a call signed by a great number of his future parishioners. He was then but twenty-five years of age. He was pastor at Timber Ridge and New Providence until 1767, and served New Providence twenty-eight years longer. In Kentucky, to which state he removed in 1797, he was pastor of Woodford church. He died there in 1803, and his grave lies between those of two men who had been his elders at New Providence. During his early years in Rockbridge, his salary was but little more than $200. It is related of him that he used to walk around the New Providence church with head uncovered and Bible in hand, and pray for the various families. He left Timber Ridge somewhat abruptly, and in consequence of a slight which seems to have been quite unpremeditated, although his sensitive nature did not permit him to excuse it. In 1755 he purchased a farm, the position of which is on the line of the Valley Railroad and a little north of Fairfield. Between the resignation of Robert Alexander in 1753 and the coming of William Graham in 1774, Mr. Brown taught the classical school begun by the former. His wife was Margaret, a sister of Colonel William Preston. The careers of several of the children reflect the substantial quality of their parentage. John, Jr., was a member of the First Congress, Samuel was a professor in Transylvania University, James was a United States senator from Louisiana and minister to France, and William was a physician of South Carolina. The daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, married, respectively, the Reverend Thomas B. Craighead and Doctor Alexander Humphreys. Samuel, who died in 1830 at the age of seventy-one, took the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Aberdeen. He then entered upon an eminent career as physician and chemist. At Lexington, Ky., he organized a medical society which is said to have been a pattern in constitution and in ethics to all such American societies of later date.
The Samuel Brown who came to New Providence as its pastor in 1796 was not related to John Brown. He was a native of the east of Virginia. In 1789, at twenty-three years old, he went to Kentucky with some friends. The journey was made on foot as far as Kanawha Falls, and by a dugout canoe the rest of the distance. After teaching a year at Paris he returned, and was licensed as a minister in 1793. His salary at New Providence was $400. Mr. Brown was feeble in constitution, yet in addition to ministerial effort he taught a classical school, and among his divinity students were several who attained distinction. He owned and lived on a farm two miles north of Brownsburg. In 1816 he went West with a view of locating, and for $1600 was offered a tract of land within the present limits of the city of St. Louis. Yet he turned down the offer, deciding that his family would be better off in the West only in a material point of view. He died two years alter his visit to Missouri. In 1798 Mr. Brown was married to Mary Moore of Abb's Valley, some account of whose captivity is given in Chapter VIII. She was an affectionate wife and loving parent. The pair had eleven children, the difference in age between the oldest and the youngest being seventeen years. Seven sons and three daughters grew to maturity. Six of the former were Bachelors of Arts of Washington College, three of them graduating in the same class. In 1918 a reunion of the descendants of Mary Moore Brown were held at New Providence, the wife of its present pastor being one of them.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)