THOMAS P. PEARSON

No information concerning the life of Rev. Thomas P. Pearson, beyond that given in the obituary in the Minutes of the General Association, has been secured. He was a native of Franklin County, Virginia, where his life was spent. He was a constituent member of the Blue Ridge Association. He was ordained at Providence Church, and in the course of his ministry served Mill Creek, Trinity. Shady Grove, and Providence Churches. His was an unostentatious life.

JAMES FOLEY KEMPER

1846-1913

Although almost all of his work as a minister was given to Missouri, still Rev. James Foley Kemper was a Virginian, and for two brief seasons a pastor in his native State. Woodville, Rappahannock County, was his birthplace, and, after so many years spent in the West, he was again in this little village when the summons came to him for the "long journey." His life reached from May 20, 1846, to April 5, 1913. His parents were Dr. Charles Rodham Kemper and Mary Virginia (Jones) Kemper. In his twenty-first year, on November 28, 1866, he was married, but it seems that at this time he was not a member of the church; indeed, his baptism did not take place till the autumn of 1870. His educational outfit for life's work was secured at the Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Va., and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, then located at Greenville, S. C. Before he had decided to become a minister of the gospel he practiced law for some months at the Rappahannock County Court, and before he became a regular pastor he was a supply, first for Dr. W. R. L. Smith at the First Baptist Church, Lynchburg, and then in Danville. While in Lynchburg he attended, May 29, 1879, at Portsmouth, the General Association as the delegate of the First Church. As a missionary of the State Mission Board he took charge of the church in Harrisonburg, Va., in 1879, remaining there some two years. About 1883 he turned his face towards the State that was to be his home and his field of labor for almost thirty years. While in Missouri he was pastor of these

churches Glasgow, Louisiana, Maryville, Marshall, Carthage, Boonville. His longest pastorate seems to have been at Marshall, where he labored from 1893 to 1902. There is full evidence of the esteem in which he was held by Missouri Baptists. When they met in their annual gathering at Lexington, October 22, 1907, he was elected moderator of the body, and before this, more than once, he had been elected vice-moderator of this convention. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from William Jewell College, and soon after his death these words about his worth and work appeared in the Word and Way: "During his connection with the Baptist work in this State no [other] minister was more generally loved and revered. . . . He was not only an able preacher, but his consecrated, godly life was an influence for good wherever he was known." In 1908 he was once more in Virginia, and as pastor of the Washington, Piedmont, and Oakley Churches, in the Shiloh Association, he labored for a few years, but the "call of the West" must have been in his heart, for in 1910 he was once again in charge of a church in Missouri. Rev. Dr. E. W. Winfrey, in the obituary he prepared of Dr. Kemper for the Minutes of the General Association, says that "he was dignified, but gracious and winsome in bearing as a man, forceful and fresh as a preacher, and his patience in suffering seemed impressively Christian," and that he was "manly, gentlemanly, amiable, brave, scholarly, consecrated, Christly." His wife, who before her marriage was Miss Laura Frances Miller, survives him.

C. E. WRENN

1858-1914

While Virginia was his birthplace, C. E. Wrenn died in San Antonio, Texas, May 22, 1914, whither he had gone, accompanied by his wife, in search of health. He was born in Hanover County in 1858, and in this section of the State his last work was done. After studying in Richmond he was baptized into the fellowship of the Grace Street Baptist Church by Rev. Dr. Wm. E. Hatcher. On August 4, 1898, he was married, in California, to Miss Alda Gaines. His ordination took place. in Danville, Va., November 5, 1906. For a season he was pastor at Jessup, Ga. His ministry in Virginia was first at the Schoolfield Church, Danville, and at the Elon (Goshen Association) and Hopewell (Dover Association) Churches. In 1909, while at the former field, he baptized twenty-nine persons into the fellowship of the church, and the following year sixty-three. The last months of his service were marked by his failing health, yet his faithfulness won large place for him among the people whom he strove to serve when death was so near at hand.

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WILLIAM HETH WHITSITT

1841-1911

While not a native of Virginia, in a very real sense Dr. Whitsitt may be called an adopted son of the Old Dominion. At a very trying hour in his life his election. to the Chair of Philosophy in Richmond College brought him to Richmond, where the remainder of his days were spent, and in Hollywood, Virginia's most beautiful "city of the dead," his body sleeps. He was always most loyal to his native State, never allowing to go by an opportunity to praise Tennessee. He was born near Nashville at the home of his father, Reuben Whitsitt, a prosperous farmer, November 25, 1841. At the age of seventeen he decided to give his life to the gospel ministry, and in 1861, after three years as a student, he graduated at the Union University, then located at Murfreesboro. He at once enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army, but was soon made a chaplain, in which office he continued until the end of the War. He was under General Nathan B. Forrest, who, in his official reports, more than once made mention of the young chaplain's courage and gallantry. In 1866 he entered the University of Virginia, and the next year the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Greenville, S. C. After two years there he went abroad to continue his studies in Leipsic and Berlin. It was not common in those days for young Baptist students from the South to study in Germany, and upon his return home doubt was entertained in some quarters as to his orthodoxy. Rev. Dr. J. J. Taylor is the authority for the story that soon after his arrival in this country he dispelled all uneasiness as to his devotion to the faith