The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1881-05-25
For the Central Presbyterian.
Hugh G.. Guthrie of Thinking
Spring Church.
BY REV. R. L. DABNEY, D. D.

April 10th, 1901, at MS residence In Cne
county of Augusta, Va, aged IS years
and 9 months.
The termination of this long life carries
US back, by single step, to that remark
able generation Of men, who both sub
dued the wilderness of Upper Virginia
and assisted to conquer the liberties OF
their State, and to found church order
new to the world. Mr.. Guthrie was
born in the year 1895, while the country
was lust settling down from the throes OF
the war of liberation, while Washington
was still President, and while nearly all
west of the Valley of Virginia was will
derness. His father was John Guthrie
and his mother Margaret Gilkeson, and
he was the eldest of ten children. John
Guthrie was one of the original Scotch
Irish immigrants into the upper Shenan-
doah Valley; and settled the lands lust
above the town of Waynesborough in
Augusta, where his family was reared.
Those smiling meadows which the rail-
road traveller now sees with delight, as
he bursts from the western spurs Of the
Blue Ridge beyond the great tunnel, just
to the left of the town, framed between
the mountain on the one hand, and the
glorious woodlands of the Valley on the
other; these are the heritage which John
Guthrie conquered from the wild, with
his own sturdy right arm aided by those
of his elder sons. The charming farm
house at the head of the etsta, nesting
amidst its orchards, is the home reared
by him for his old age.
The generation of men and women to
viii, b John Guthrie belonged, and from
which the subject of this sketch sprang,
deserves to be held in everlasting re-
membrane by Virginians. Certain it
Is, that their exact like can never be pro-
duced again, amidst our modern "im-
provements' and luxurious appliances of
civilization. 1t will be well for us if we
ever witness their equals. They were a
homespun race, dressed in the pro-
ducts of their own feeces and fax, man
ufactured wholly in their own homes :;
living in rough but comfortable wooden
houses, built by their own hands; having
no commercial establishments nearer than
Underwater; and strangers to every lux
ury OF diet, except what their own farms
and forests yielded; doing not only all
their farm and domestic work with their
own hands, but also most of their car
pentry, coopers' work, and blacksmith
ing; possessing no books except Bibles,
and few standards of Presbyterian the
ology, and ancient and British history
and poetry, with no periodical literature
OF any kind; furnished with no schools
Tor either boys or girls above the pri-
mary. When John Guthrie settled on
South River, those beautiful valley lands,
now adorned with the unrivalled groves
OF oak, were Just passing from the prairie
state into that OF brushwood, Cor "bar-
rens, } whose suckers were not vet tall
enough to hide the lope'' of deer. He
mad to go into the gorges of the neigh
boring mountain to find a tree large
enough to make fence rail, or build the
pen OF log barn. Two great rail-
roads now send their trains laundering
across each other at Waynesborough, and
turnpike-roads radiate in several direc-
tons. Then, in the Valley, there were
more sleds than wheeled carts; and the
only way across RockfshGap, was trail
for pack horses
But those homespun m, and women
were true gentlemen and ladies. They
wore no silks or broad cloths No. Their
speech, and their social usages were sea-
soned with the quaint idiom, and the old
world ways of the Lowlands of Scotland !;
how could it be otherwise as they came
thence, and remained insulted from all
other civilizations? Every hand, of faith
er, mother, boy, and girl, was hardened
by honest labor. Yet had they the clear
ness and business of mind, the grave dig
nifty, the jealous personal honor, the self
respecting-purity, of true gentlemen and
ladies, Oh that cur college-bred genera
ton could be found as free from "slanp
talk, and from loose views of principle
and social duty, as those old yeomen
were Would that our congressional
orators had 1.-THE of their personal dig
nifty and their public and private intee-
rity Would that our silken Young
ladies, oIo1n,nee of Female Colleges" and
equipped with all the "ologies,' were
found as pure and modest, and as accom-
plished mistresses of household tidiness
and skill, as those womenl This was the
generation which, though unblessed with
means OF classic culture themselves, in
the very agony of war for existence.
created Liberty Hall Academy, and
Hampden Sidney College. These were
the men who, rising above the shackles
OF universal European opinion, taught
Jefferson and Madison that free order Of
spiritual liberty and church-independ-
ence, which Is destined to be the model