My Genealogy Hound

Rev. R. S. Gladney (deceased), the father of Profs. William H. and John S. Gladney, was a native of South Carolina, and was reared in a district where people were compelled to do their own work, and it may be truly said of him that he was the “architect of his own fortune.” Working on the farm and going to school in turns, he prepared himself for college, and at a later period was graduated with high honors from the literary and theological schools of Columbia, S. C., after which he was married to Miss Jane Amanda McMillan, the daughter of a wealthy merchant of that city. About this time he was elected principal of the Columbia Female Seminary, which position he filled successfully for several years, after which he removed to Alabama, and still later to Mississippi, where he continued the two-fold career of preaching the gospel and teaching school, besides devoting a portion of his time to his farming interests. Notwithstanding the fact that the concentration of his mental powers was much thwarted by this diversity of pursuits, he took high mark in the Old School Presbyterian Church, of which he was a member. He was extensively known, in his time, as an able writer of articles in reviews and other periodicals, and in 1859 he published a book written in blank verse, of which it may be said that if the poetry was not of the Elizabethan standard, the sarcasms on the various “issues” of the day were quite effective. In the year 1869 he was cut down in the midst of his usefulness and labors as a minister of the gospel; his soul passed peacefully away from the scenes of earth, and he was buried with suitable honors at West Point, Miss. Prof. William H. Gladney, his son, of the Hamburg High School, is a native of South Carolina, but during his infancy his parents moved west, and settled in Pickens County, Ala., moving at the end of a few years to Monroe County, Miss. In the latter State, and principally in the town of Aberdeen, the subject of this sketch passed his boyhood, with such educational advantages as the newly settled country afforded. While still in his minority he was sent to Pickensville, Ala., to attend the high school conducted by Profs. Connerly, Nash and Quinche, and after remaining in this institution for ten months, he proceeded to Tuscaloosa, and became a student of the University of Alabama, where he was graduated in 1856, with an average grade of 95 per cent on all studies of his three years’ course. With health much impaired by two severe spells of sickness—pneumonia in the sophomore year, and measles in the junior—it became necessary to spend two or three years almost entirely in recruiting his health. Thus, but little progress, intellectual or financial, was made during the years immediately preceding the Civil War. Enlisting, at the outset of that war, in the first company organized at Aberdeen—the same afterward known as Company I, Eleventh Mississippi—he served during nearly the entire war in the Army of Virginia. At the close of the war he engaged in teaching, carrying on, at the same time, a course of study in the elementary text-books on the law, and in the year of 1872, being then engaged in teaching in the old West Tennessee College at Jackson, Tenn., he was licensed to practice law in that State. Domestic matters, however, prevented him from devoting himself to this chosen profession, and it became necessary, therefore, to turn his attention more exclusively to the occupation of teaching. After having had charge of several schools, at different times, in the State of Tennessee, he removed to Hamburg, Ashley County, Ark., where he acted as assistant teacher in the high school established by Prof. D. C. B. Connerly, his former preceptor in the State of Alabama. Upon the withdrawal of Prof. Connerly, he became associated with his brother, John S. Gladney, in the management of the Hamburg High School, and for the years intervening between 1882 and 1890 these two veteran teachers have successfully maintained the well-deserved reputation of the school, and are considered among the most successful educators and best disciplinarians of the State. Prof. William H. Gladney was married in Ashley County to Miss Lizzie N. Barnes, a daughter of W. W. Barnes, a successful farmer of Bearhouse Township.