Robert Ryland

Background

Robert Ryland was the son of Josiah and Catharine (Peachey) Ryland of "Farmington, " King and Queen County, Virginia.

Education

From 1820 to 1823 he was a student at Humanity Hall Academy, conducted by Peter Nelson in Hanover County, and in 1826 he was graduated from Columbian College, Washington, D. C.

Career

Entering the Baptist ministry, Ryland accepted a call to the Second Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. When, in 1832, the Baptists established at Richmond the Virginia Baptist Seminary to educate young men for the ministry, he was placed in charge. No detail of direction was too minute for his watchful care. He recruited likely students as he drove through the state, combining the mission of preacher and teacher.

When the Seminary was chartered as Richmond College in 1840, he was made president and continued to direct its affairs with fidelity to two principles he had adopted--to keep the college out of debt and to make no educational claims that he was not able to substantiate.

When the Civil War interrupted its logical development, the faculty, student body, buildings, and endowment attested his successful and constructive leadership. In addition to his college work, he labored among the Negroes of Richmond, serving as pastor of the First African Church from 1841 to 1865, during which time nearly four thousand members were added to the church roll. The catechism he wrote for his unlettered members required only two answers, "yes" or "no, " with a passage of scripture to be memorized to support the answer. Many of the leaders of the Negroes in Richmond in the early decades of their struggle up from slavery had been taught their standards in life by him and gratefully acknowledged their indebtedness.

When the war was over, he resigned in the belief that the church would prefer a preacher of the Negro race, an arrangement not hitherto permitted under Virginia law. Before the war, in an address published under the title The American Union (1857), he had advised against the defense of slavery as right in the abstract, though he saw in the institution a means used by God to teach the Negroes the Christian religion.

In 1866, feeling that younger minds should direct the affairs of a college to serve the new generation, he resigned the presidency of Richmond College. Subsequently, he accepted a position to teach in the National Theological School for Negro preachers in Richmond, and was connected, also, with the Richmond Female Institute, a Baptist school for girls.

In 1868 he moved to Kentucky to become president of the Shelbyville Female College, served a similar institution at Lexington (1871 - 78), and another at New Castle (1878 - 81). He spent succeeding years with a daughter in Lexington, and in 1893, when nearly ninety years old, became chaplain of Southwest Virginia Institute, at Bristol, acting in that capacity for four years.

Achievements

• Dr. Ryland was one of the most eminent ministers of his day. He was influential in the progress of the Baptist denomination, being a distinguished educator, author, and leader in denominational affairs. Ryland favored colonization in Africa, was opposed to disunion, counseled compromise on the part of the South, and recommended abstinence from all agitation on the subject of the "peculiar institution. " He supported the Confederacy, however; devoted his time and resources to the care of wounded soldiers; invested his own savings in the Confederate cause, and advised the investment of the endowment funds of Richmond College in Confederate bonds. His published books and pamphlets included: Baptism for the Remission of Sins (1836); A Scripture Catechism for the Instruction of Children and Servants (1848); Lectures on the Apocalypse (1857); The Virginia Baptist Educational Society: The Society--The Seminary--The College (1891); and "A Sketch of the Life of the Late Rev. Robert Baylor Semple, " in the Virginia Baptist Preacher (Richmond), April 1852.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Society, the Seminary, the College (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Society, the Seminary, the College A review...)

  • Lectures on the Apocalypse (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Lectures on the Apocalypse The author of th...)

  • Baptism for the remission of sins examined; in a discourse,

Connections

His first wife, whom Ryland married in 1830, was Josephine, daughter of Thomas Norvell of Richmond. She died in 1846, and he later married Betty Presley Thornton, daughter of Anthony and Ann Thornton of Caroline County. There were four children by the first marriage and three by the second.

Father:

Josiah Ryland

Mother:

Catharine (Peachey) Ryland

Spouse:

Josephine Norvell

Spouse:

Betty Presley Thornton