Mississippi College - Tribesman Yearbook (Clinton, MS)

Page 21 text:

B. W. Griffith H ONORABLE B. W. GRIFFITH, son of General Richard Griffith, who fell at Savage Station in the war between the states, was horn in Hinds County, Miss., January 3, 1853. After receiving his preparatory education in the public schools in and around Jackson he entered Mississippi College in 1870, and two years later was graduated with the degree of B. A. as valedictorian of his class. Later, the degree of Master of Arts was conferred on him. After serving as bookkeeper in the Capital National Bank of Jackson for several years, he was elected cashier of that institution which position he held until 1893. He was then elected president of the First National Bank of Vicksburg, Miss., a position he still holds. Mr. Griffith is one of those consecrated laymen who are doing so much to advance the Christian cause in our State. He has been a deacon for nearly thirty years and is ever ready to lend his influence and means for the advancement of any worthy cause, for many years he was Superintendent of the Sunday School at Jackson and filled the same office at Vicksburg for several years. A loyal friend of the College, he has served on the Board of Trustees for a num- ber of years and has been a member of the executive and investment committees of that Board ever since these committees were named. He was elected Mayor of Vicksburg on the reform ticket in 1904 and has given that city a clean, conservative and yet signally progressive administration. 9

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I. N. Ellis M R. I. N. ELLIS, cashier of the Merchants’ and Planters’ Bank, Hazlehurst, Miss., has been a prominent trustee of Mississippi College foi many yeais. He was horn in Copiah County, Miss., in 1849. He worked on a farm and went to school until he was sixteen, when he joined the State Militia and seived as a soldier for the last year of the Civil War. After the war he attended Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tenn. When twenty-three years of age he was elected Chancery Clerk of Copiah County. The same year he was married to Miss Georgia Stapleton, a native of the State of Georgia. At the close of his four years’ term as Chancery Clerk he entered the mercantile business at Hazlehurst. In 1882, in connection with Major R. W. Millsaps, he organized the Merchants’ and Planters’ Bank and has served as vice-president and cashier up to the present time. Mr. Ellis is a deacon in the Baptist Church at Hazlehurst; has always been greatly interested in the educational affairs of his town; is a patriotic citizen and liberal giver to all good causes and, in general, is a man who would be an honor to any community. He has a large family of promising sons and daughters and one of the most hospitable to be found anywhere. Mr. Ellis never fails to make a libeial donation when Mississippi College undertakes a forward financial movement. If Mississippi College had one thousand such friends she could soon take the place at the very head of the list of denominational colleges of the South. 18

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T HIS widely known, useful and highly- esteemed minister of Jesus Christ was born in Illinois, October 13, 1832. When only three years of age his parents came to Madison County, Miss., where he grew to manhood. He was educated in the common schools of the county and at Mississippi Col- lege, where he was at the beginning of the war preparing for the ministry. He entered the Confederate Army as a private soldier and was a member of the Eighth Mississippi Regiment, in which he served the first two years as a soldier and the last two as a chaplain. He participated in most of the great battles fought by the Army J. A. Hackett, D. D. Northern Virginia and in many of the religious revivals that characterized the army at that time. When peace returned to our Sunny South he entered fully and legulaily into the work of the ministry. In 1876 he resigned a pastorate in the interest of the “Mississippi Baptist Record,” the newly-established organ of the State Convention, and was connected with that paper for some time. As a preacher, Doctor Hackett is warmly and thoroughly devoted to the grand old Pauline doctrines of the Bible, the good old paths in which there is sate walking and rest for the soul. His preaching is of such a character as to produce solid results and had he given himself wholly to the work of the ministry there would have been no better or more successful preacher in the State. He was first elected trustee of Mississippi College in 1868. 20