University of Virginia Library

MILTON WYLIE HUMPHREYS

The Humphreys Residence House commemorates
the name of Milton Wylie
Humphreys, Professor of Greek from 1887
to 1912, who might indeed have been credited
with the Carlylean title of Professor
of Things-in-General. He was born 15 September
1844 in Greenbrier County while
it was still a part of Virginia—in 1863 it
was included in the separated State of West
Virginia. His father was a practising physician,
largely self-trained, whose ancestors
came from Ireland just prior to the Revolutionary
War. His mother was of Scotch
origin, and her grandfather had died from
a wound received in that War of Independence.
The boy's youth was spent in
the rugged hill country, where he developed
a powerful body which was matched
with an indomitable urge for education.
He was able to attend Mercer Academy in
Charleston, and to enter Washington College
in Lexington, Virginia, in 1860.

After one year as a student, he enlisted

in Bryan's Battery of the Virginia Artillery,
and he served as a gunner until the
surrender at Appomattox, giving in his
war diary and in his autobiography extraordinarily
full records of the campaigns in
which he was engaged. After the war, faced
with conditions of extreme poverty, he was
seeking for a means of livelihood when he
learned that General Lee had become
President of Washington College, and
young Humphreys resolved to make a desperate
effort to resume his college course.
Even that effort had reached the point of
despair when General Lee personally made
it possible for him to remain. Moreover,
while still a student, Humphreys was appointed
an Assistant Professor of Greek to
fill a vacancy. He later stated that had the
vacancy been in Mathematics, for which
subject he felt better fitted, the whole
course of his subsequent career would probably
have been in Science. He was graduated,
the first in his class, in 1869 with
the degree of M.A., and he was continued
as Adjunct Professor of Ancient Languages
from 1870 to 1875, the institution having
become Washington and Lee University
after the death of General Lee in 1870.
During that period, however, he was
granted leave of absence for two years of
study in Germany, where he obtained a
Ph.D. in Greek at Leipzig. There followed
two 'firsts." He was the first Professor of
Greek at Vanderbilt University (18751883),
and he was the first Professor of
Latin and Greek at the University of Texas
(1883–1887). It was in 1887 that he began
his term of twenty-five years in the chair of
Greek at the University of Virginia.

Fitting himself into a reorganization of
the courses in Ancient Languages, he gave
vigorous instruction in Greek. Greek was
his subject; and while as need arose he
helped out in other subjects, he was sensitive
to the possible implication of being
superficial in his attainments. He had earlier,
however, declined invitations from
other institutions for professorships in English,
Modern Languages, and Physics, and
twice he refused college presidencies. At

the University of Virginia he was President
of the Philosophical Society, and he was
one of the original members of the Beta
Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Wielding an
industrious pen, he contributed articles on
philological subjects (he was in turn Vice
President and President of the American
Philological Association); he was the
American Editor of the Revue des Revues,
appended to the Parisian Revue de Philologie;
he produced editions of the "Clouds"
of Aristophanes (1881), of the "Antigone"
of Sophocles (1891), and of Demosthenes'
"On the Crown" (1913). Through all his
absorption in scholarship, his mind eagerly
reverted to the thrilling years of his war
service, and he was an occasional contributor
to the United States Journal of Artillery,
in articles significant for his discoveries
in indirect firing and terrestrial shifts.
He was the recipient of the honorary
degree of LL.D. from Washington and Lee
and Vanderbilt Universities. But the title
he most cherished was that of "The First
Gunner of Bryan's Battery."

In 1877 Professor Humphreys married
the daughter of Dr. Landon Garland,
Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, and
his honeymoon was spent in a second trip
to Europe, Greece being the country of
his special investigation. His wife died in
1901. He retired from teaching in 1912,
but he lived in his home on Wertland
Street until 1928, continuing into his alert
old age a notable intellectual capacity along
with the simplicity of a youthful mountaineer.
Four talented daughters, Louise
Garland Humphreys, Mrs. Edward R.
Dyer, Mrs. Dean W. Hendrickson, and
Mrs. John S. Derr, survived him.

His was a mind enriched with profound
learning and stocked with infinite detail.
He was to the last a blending of an irrepressible
boyhood and of a sage. When his stalwart
heart failed on 20 November 1928,
President Alderman said of him that "the
University of Virginia will cherish him
among its great men." On his tombstone
in the University Cemetery, along with the
dates of birth and death, is the pithy depiction,

"Bryan's Battery, C.S.A. Chair of
Greek, Univ. Va. 1887–1912."