Nearly 60 years ago I entered school at this place with Col. James C. Davis as teacher. This community was then 
at its high tide of intellectual and material prosperity. No teacher was considered unless he had classical training. There 
was not a poor family in all its territory. The men who controlled its interests were in the prime of vigorous manhood, and 
dispensed generous hospitality to all. Morality and temperance went hand in hand with virtue and probity. High thinking and 
the simple life were the products of its civilization. One distinguishing trait of our Scotch ancestry was the absence of 
anything like class society. All were on the same social footing, and if any lost it, it was their own fault. This absence 
of upper and lower classes came down from the Clan system of Scotland, when the meanest and poorest Highlanders felt them-
selves to be the equal of the chief himself.
	Looking back at this period of my life, I can now realize how supremely contented and satisfied were all the people with 
themselves and their surroundings. They lived in the best land and in the best community of that land. No harrowing mortgages 
or pressing liens disturbed their peaceful slumbers. Their land needed draining, but they cultivated the choice spots; their 
fields needed stumping, but they didn't know it; their roads needed straightening, but they didn't appreciate the change; the 
fields needed rotation, but they didn't understand it; but with all this their boys grew up sober, industrious and manly, and 
were taught to ride, to shoot and to tell the truth. Their girls grew up straignt, vigorous, healthy, beautiful and domestic, 
with not a sanatarium in all the land, and "now what was ye wish for more, mon?"
	These were some of the conditions that surrounded us when the great black clous was making up to our unconscious gaze, that 
soon overspread our peaceful country and drenched us with its bloody waters.
	Looking back to those peaceful days I unthinkly spent under the pleasant groves, I can recall incidents, happening and occasions 
that now seem as real as yesterday. Some were serious at the time (especially many lessons), others ludicrous, some ridiculous, and 
there were a few heart aches; but all are so mellowed by the transforming hand of time that their glamor makes me feel like a boy 
again today.
	A few character sketches of our teacher, Col. Davis, and of those boys and girls with whom I was most intimately acquainted, but 
who have, wit their teacher, passed to the Great Beyond, will close this paper.
	Col. James C. Davis had graduated at Princeton the year before and had been employed by Angus McBryde and your speaker's father 
at the then unheard-of price of $500 a year. He had acquitted himself then so well that the next year the trustees of this school 
had employed him. He in a great measure changed the usual mode of teaaching from an impersonal to one of a personal attitude. Of a 
sanguine disposition, united with an enthusiastic temperament, he imbued his scholars with a spirit of enterprise and progress. He 
lectured a good deal on certain studies, and even now the only facts your speaker remembers of natural science, even after graduating 
at gollege, are things unconsciousely caught up at those times. As the students of a great English teacher, Dr. Hughes, considered him 
the greatest of men, so even I look back at him now as the greatest man I ever knew. He impressed himself so upon the hearts and minds 
of his students.
	Daniel White Johnson-primus inter pares-was perhaape the most brilliant scholar in the school. He was vigorous both in mind and body, 
and weilded a tremendous silent influence. He was gifted in debate, and was withal the most popular man I ever knew. He fell at the head 
of his company with a bullet hole through his forehead, during the seven days fighting around Richmond.-Thos. Scott Graham wa a quiet, 
self-contained man, and was noted for his integrity of character. He was a fair scholar, the best in his class, of which your speaker was 
one.-John Alexander Love was one of the best men I ever knew. Industrious, jovial and kind-hearted, it was always always a pleasure to 
be in his company. Robert Angus Love was just the opposite of his brother John. Warm-hearted and generous, he was yet quick-tempered and 
at times erasible, but his temper was of short duration. He loved a joke and could tell one well. He had a rententive memory, and a mind 
far above the mediocre.-A.A. McBryde was a man orf considerable literary attainments, and upon moving to Texas, after the war, he exerted 
quite an influence in the newspaper line in that State. His character was quiet and unassuming.-H.W.W. McDougald-we called him Wallace-was 
one of nature's noblemen. I knew him intimately in the war, when one's nature is tested. With malice towards none, and charity to all, I 
believe he was ready when the call came. John McIntyre McNeill was a great favorite with his friends, was quiet in demeanor and sociable 
in desposition-a lovable character. He was wounded at Sharpsburg and died two days afterwards and was buried on the banks of the Opequon 
creek, near Martinsburg, Va. Angus McNeill, his brother, died at home of typhoid fever in 1862. He was a man of powerful physique and of 
a jovial and pleasant temperament, energetic and blessed with a sunny temperament.
	Eliza Love, Harriet Graham McDougald, Kate McArn Watson, Felicia H. McBryde and Mary Purcell Shaw were some of the girls of this school 
whom I knew best. They all developed to be women of the highest type of character and lived to influence their families and communities 
with much that was good and elevating. When their tides of life went out there was not moaning of the bar.
	Now to all my surviving friends of old Spring Branch, I close with these paraphrased lines of Tennyson:
For tho' from out the bournes of Time and Place
	The flood may bear us far,
We hope to see our Pilot face to face,
	When we have crossed the bar.

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This page created October 31, 2017 by Myrtle Bridges