HARRY ASHBY [REV] BAGBY 6, (GEORGE FRANKLIN [REV] 5, JOHN CHRISTOPHER 4, RICHARD 3, JOHN 2, JAMES 1) was born November 23, 1863 in King & Queen County, Virginia and died October 5, 1945 in King & Queen County, Virginia. He married ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" THOMPSON. She was born Unknown and died Unknown.

Notes for HARRY ASHBY [REV] BAGBY:

THE BAGBYS
By: Harry Ashby Bagby, D.D.

The Bagby's are of Scotch blood, chiefly. They were among the first settlers on this side of the Atlantic, James, Isom and William Bagby were in Jamestown in the days of Berkeley, and of Bacon's Rebellion. As a people they have been religious enough and sensible enough to become numerous. Their name is legion. They have loved peace, though they never feared to lift a lance against social or theological foe. They have builded on education and religion. An illiterate Bagby, or one who is anti-Christian, would be hard to find.

Some of them early followed the trail of Daniel Boone to "The dark and bloody ground", and they have done their bit, and are still at it in Kentucky. I personally knew Rev. C.J. Bagby who spent his life in the Baptist ministry in North Middle Kentucky, and his younger brother, D.Y., Th. D., I think whose useful life has been spent largely in Texas. However tempted, I must try to stick to my text. The task you have set me is to write of Virginia Bagbys. The Virginia stock has had much to be grateful for, and very little to hide.

I must speak first of those of the family who have been or are ministers of Christ. Here, to me, is a fascinating story. Nearly all of the Bagbys in Virginia have been Baptists, and the patriarch of this tribe was John Bagby, of Stevensville, in the sequestered and unique county of King and Queen. The picture of his face somehow makes me think of the iron Duke of Wellington. He was a Virginia planter and man of affairs, a very large slave owner, living in an ample home called Bunker Hill, and having at hand every thing then known to comfort. Such is not generally the kind of home out of which ministers come. I have heard it affirmed many times that when he died he left behind him one hundred and fifty descendants, and that not a one of this number had ever passed the age of fifteen without uniting with a Baptist church. Nearly all of these have kept the faith of our fathers to the end, though a few have been deflected by the infatuation of a strangely legalistic theory of baptism. My father used to say that his mother - or mothers, for in effect he had two, though he never knew the one who gave him birth - used to pray that the Lord would give them one of her boys to preach the gospel. The answer to that family prayer may be seen in the following: Five stalwart boys came out of the home: Richard Hugh, the eldest, was easily one of the foremost preachers of his day. The influence of his life and ministry abides, and yea, will abide. He spent a whole generation as pastor of Old Bruington, his home church, a church which for culture, ability and generosity was not surpassed in the State. He fell at his loved post of duty at the early age of fifty. After the oldest I speak of the youngest, Edward. He must have been singularly magnetic. It was his avowed purpose to preach. While gallantly loading on at the battle of the Crater in Petersburg, his life was cut off. My father was next to the youngest. He gave his entire life to the ministry, mostly in Kentucky. If to preach is to be possessed of certain burning truths which are called the Gospel, and in glowing eagerness, to pour these out of one's own soul into the hearts of those he loves, then George Franklin Bagby ought, in all candor, to be rated with our great preachers. Dr. Alfred Bagby has but recently gone to his reward, and, to my mind, that reward will be vastly greater than he ever thought of. He was pastor of famous old Mattaponi church, two miles from where he was born and reared, for, I believe, thirty-five years. His book, "King and Queen County" has given him earthly immortality. These four were ministers. The other was Major John Robert, who spent his life in merchandising. He came home from the war a major. Such was his influence in the county that, when his elder brother died, the Bruington church sent a committee to ask him to allow them to ordain him, and make him their pastor. He was, perhaps, the leading influence in Bruington as long as he lived. Had he heard the call of the church, it would have given the entire set of five sons to the ministry.

But even this is not all of the story. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren out of that house have heard and continue to hear the call of the ministry. I am sure I cannot name them all. Such an enumeration ought to mention as near of kin: C.J. and D.Y., whom we can now only name. John Bagby was uncle to Captain A.F. Bagby, of Tappahannock, who has given to the ministry two gifted sons, Edward and Richard, the first being at one time pastor of a large church in Washington and Chaplain of our House of Representatives. A third son is a doctor of fine reputation. John W. Ryland, a grandson, was one of the worthiest and truest in this line of ministeral succession, Ryland Murdock is another. I was a member of the Council which ordained him at Bruington, in 1897. After a very brief ministry he fell on sleep. Edward Bagby Pollard was, I presume, the most distinguished of the line of descent. He was pure in heart, finely educated, clear in thought, and in expression and with the courage of a beautiful conviction. Of the children of George Franklin; Virginia May [Mrs. A.B. Rudd] gave her life to missionary work in Mexico and Porto Rico, doing bravely the work of a preacher, though not technically a minister. A. Paul has been one of the best equipped and one of the most attractive and efficient of this bare catalogue of such public servants of Christ. Harry Ashby has been pastor in a number of most important pastorates during the last forty years. Olive Bagby, granddaughter of John, through both her father and her sainted mother, gave the beauty of her consecrated youth to missionary activities in China. What a wise Master-builder, what a maker of preachers was this man of action and of faith, and the noble women who helped to make Bunker Hill such an extraordinary plant-bed of Baptist preachers! Descended from a very near-by branch of the family tree is Wm. B. Bagby, that prince among modern missionaries. I doubt if Southern Baptists have ever had a more splendid representative in foreign lands than this minister to Brazil. The Lord has blessed him and his devoted wife in giving them a son [C.T.] in the ministry.

But apart from the ministry, the Bagbys have wrought well; farmers, merchants, teachers, doctors, lawyers. They have often been what is called "hard-headed". Maybe that is the Scotch in them. I know among them no trimmer, no dodger or slacker. Scores of them have been superintendents and deacons in many Baptist churches in many States. Though many of them sons of ministers, they have been, with rare and deplorable exceptions, outstanding sons of the Kingdom of Righteousness. I do not know where there can be found, out of the pulpit or in it, a more Christ-like soul than Luther R., son of the illustrious Richard Hugh. Some one once said to Dr. P.S. Henson: "You come, I believe from Fluvanna County, where they raise persimmons!" The reply was flashed back: "Yes, and Men!" The proud mother of several successful Christian men said to me the other day: "I have always said that it does not take much money to raise boys." My uncle, Alfred, and his very gifted Pollard wife knew how to rear boys without money. Out of that humble home there went forth two business men and four lawyers, and in the qualities that count for most in the highest type of Christian citizenship, these men range not far from the top. The eldest, Thomas, was a fine Christian lawyer of West Point. Charles, Alfred and George Poindexter have won distinction in the legal profession in the great City of Baltimore. But each one of them is as prominent in his church as in his profession. Bagby-Pollard, or Pollard-Bagby, makes a very happy combination; as witness again Hon. John Garland Pollard. Had he been willing to "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, that [political] thrift might follow fawning", he might have been Governor of Virginia. Something akin to that might be said of Hon. Wm. F. Bagby, of Stevensville. His official connection with Bruington runs through forty years. I have been told that years ago, when he was Superintendent of the Sunday school, several times when the ground was too rough and deeply frozen for horse to travel, he walked the six miles to open his Sunday school on time. Of my own brothers: Frederic Hugh, eldest, business man in Texas; Theo. Gresham, of Kansas City; Geo. Franklin, M.D., of Richmond, and Leslie H., of New Orleans, have all been intelligent, outstanding, influential Christian men. I think they have all been deacons. With the Bagby tree before me. I cannot subscribe to the idea that the children of the manse nearly always go to the Devil. If any Bagby, who is now following Jesus, should chance to read these lines, let him know that the shout of an almost unanimous tribe would welcome him into the fellowship of our fathers. Such folk have been influential in civic and in religious life, because, without hypocrisy, with sane minds, and with the highest motives, they have loved and followed the right as God gave them to see the right.

I have left out much which would have appropriate place in such connection. I cannot willingly close until I have said this: Personally and spiritually, the most irresistible of the Bagby tribe have been the women. It is often hard to give them their due praise because they marry and carry through life other names: for a Bagby, male or female, is bound to marry. Their song, their suffering, their blood and their prayers have had as much to do with building the walls of Jerusalem as the hands of their hardier fathers and brothers. Where so many so richly deserve to be spoken of, it is inadmissible to mention even one by name. It were good for the Kingdom of all beauty and truth that their kind be multiplied in every country on earth.

Source: copied from papers sent to John Robert Bagby of Mountain View, Arkansas, excerpt from book "unknown" pages 95-99, sent by way of letter from Wilbur E. Bagby, addressed to Donald Bagby, 609 Lincoln, East Alton, Illinois, dated January 13, 1966, copied to John Robert Bagby, Mountain View, Arkansas.

Note: In the last line of the fourth paragraph of this article, there is a typo. Where Harry Ashby Bagby refers to C. T. Bagby, it should have been T. C. Bagby. His name was Taylor Crawford Bagby.

More About HARRY ASHBY [REV] BAGBY:
Burial: Bruington Baptist Church Cemetery, King and Queen County, Virginia.
Grave Marker reads: "A BORN PREACHER, AN AFFECTIONATE PASTOR, A WISE THINKER, A LOVER OF THE LORD"
Degree: Doctor of Divinity.
Individual Note: Information about Rev. Harry Ashby Bagby in Asseccion No: Miscellaneous Reel 37-39, Author: Whitsitt, William Heth, personal papers collection, Accession No: 24812, also Accession No.: Miscellaneous Reel 37-39, Author: Whitsitt, William Heth.
Religion: Baptist.

Children of HARRY BAGBY and ELIZABETH THOMPSON are:

1. EDWARD BOOKER BAGBY, SR., b. February 5, 1896, King & Queen County, Virginia; d. November 1, 1969, Chester County, South Carolina.
2. MARIUS C. BAGBY, b. Unknown; Unknown.

 

GEORGE "FRANKLIN" BAGBY, JR. [M.D.] 6, (GEORGE FRANKLIN [REV] 5, JOHN CHRISTOPHER 4, RICHARD 3, JOHN 2, JAMES 1) was born December 5, 1865 in Virginia and died September 3, 1957 in Virginia. He married MARY JANE "MAMIE" LAWRENCE. She was born January 18, 1873 and died February 18, 1953.

More About DR GEORGE "FRANKLIN" BAGBY, JR. [M.D.]:
Burial: Bruington Baptist Church Cemetery, King and Queen County, Virginia
Note 1: Birth & Death dates from grave marker
Note 2: Resided in Richmond, Virginia
Religion: Baptist
He was an ordained Deacon.

Notes for MARY JANE "MAMIE" LAWRENCE:
Burial: Bruington Baptist Church Cemetery, King and Queen County, Virginia.
Birth and Death dates taken from grave marker.

Children of GEORGE BAGBY and MARY LAWRENCE are:

1. ELIZABETH BAGBY, b. Unknown; d. Unknown.
2. MILDRED A. BAGBY, b. Unknown; d. Unknown.
3. GEORGE F. BAGBY III, b. Unknown; d. Unknown.
4. NANCY M. BAGBY, b. Unknown; d. Unknown.

 

 

 

 

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