Mississippi College - Tribesman Yearbook (Clinton, MS)

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9 Ex-President Webb jR. W. S. WEBB was born in 1825 in the State of New York, the youngest ot fourteen children, where he attended the public schools until he was eighteen years of age, when he entered the academy at Kingsville, Ohio, under Dr Z C. Graves, the distinguished brother of Dr. J. R. Graves, where he’ was prepared for college and was converted and joined the Baptist church. From this academy he entered what is now Colgate University and was graduated from this institution with the A. B. degree in 1849, and with the A. ' M. degree two years later. That year he was induced by (. R. Graves, who was his first Greek teacher to take charge of an academy near Murtreesboro, Tennessee. He was here married and ordained to the full work of the ministry, Dr. Joseph Eaton, President of Union University preaching the ordination sermon. It was his deliberate purpose to devote his life exclusively to the preaching of the gospel but God seemed to have other work for him, and a call came just at this time to the presidency of Grenada Female College, Grenada, Mississippi, which he accepted, and, reaching Grenada by the old-fashioned stagecoach on Friday morning, September i, 1851, he “delivered his inaugural address on Saturday night, preached a funeral sermon on Sunday, and entered upon his duties as President of the College on Monday morning. When he left this position, six years later, it was the largest college for girls in Mississippi. I ow . fo,lowed a period of some fourteen years devoted to pastoral work with various c lurches in northeast Mississippi, from which field he was called to Clinton, first as pastor, and a year and a half later, at the resignation of Dr. Hillman, was elected to succeed him as resident of Mississippi College. Thus through a long chain of providences was he led into the great field of Christian education, to do a monumental work for which his peculiar abilities seemed preeminently to fi t 11m. A great work and a great worker thus met, but amid conditions that called for supei- uiman wisdom and strength. President Webb’s entire administration of eighteen years was under conditions that would have driven a less heroic soul not only into discouragement, , Ut ° des P air - He was called to the helm when the College was like a disabled ship that had )are y escaped the terrors of storm only to face unseaworthy and unprovisioned the worse terro rs of a calm with not a breeze to swell the sails. Indifference was added to ruin. It was tie heroic effort to steer the College into port over this becalmed sea, when all interest in the i ° ege seemed dead, that palsied those brave hands and shattered that stalwart frame which »s sacred yet, even in its ruins, to every old student of the College who felt and feels still the niora uplift to his life from personal touch with this second man of Rugby. From the humble p at orm of the old Lower Chapel there went out power which has advanced every good cause m Mississippi, and has been felt around the world. His dominant talent was to awaken the soul to vitalize the life, to build character and to enlist it in the noblest lines of the world’s T 1 U- He fl was the g randest character-builder that the State has known. The writer vet teels his influence as one of the strongest forces for good that ever entered his life l A niin, stratum being cast ,n a t, me when a moneyed endowment was a distinct impossibly he addressed h.mself to the even h.gher work of endowing the institution with student loyalty and denominational love, wh.ch was the best possible preparation for the present movement for greatly enlar ged endowment and equipment. e 1 We hail him, “Our greatest, yet with least pretense, Rich in saving common sense, And as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime.” The good gray head will soon be seen no more. For life’s self-sacrifice to him will soon be o’er.” P. H. E.