Alexander Q . Holladay Alexander Quarles Holladay LL . D . ( 8 May 1839 – 13 March 1909 ) was a United States lawyer , state senator and college administrator . During the Civil War , Holladay was an officer of the Confederate States Army , rising to the rank of Colonel . For the remainder of his life he was commonly called " Colonel Holladay " . Life . The son of Alexander Richmond Holladay ( 1811 – 1877 ) , a lawyer and former U . S . Representative , by his marriage to Patsy Quarles Poindexter , Holladay was born in Cherry Grove , Virginia . He was educated , like his father , at the University of Virginia ( 1857 – 1859 ) and then at the University of Berlin ( 1859 – 1861 ) where he specialized in Latin , Greek , moral philosophy , and law . While at Charlottesville , he was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity . On April 17 , 1861 , a few days after the outbreak of the Civil War , Holladay married Virginia Randolph Bolling , a daughter of Thomas Bolling of Bolling Island , in the upper James River in Goochland County , Virginia . On May 25 , 1861 , he was commissioned into the Confederate States Army . The Holladays ' daughter Mary Stuart Holladay was born on February 3 , 1862 , their son William Waller Holladay on September 7 , 1864 , and their daughter Julia Cabell Holladay in 1868 . They had two further sons , Alexander Randolph Holladay ( March 12 , 1870 ) , and Charles Bolling Holladay , ( February 12 , 1873 ) . During the four years of the Civil War , Holladay rose from Second Lieutenant to Colonel . After the war ended in 1865 , he studied law and went on to practice in partnership with his father between 1870 and 1877 ( Holladay , White and Holladay ) . During that period , he served in the Virginia State Senate as senator for Richmond , from 1871 to 1875 . He taught in Richmond for a while before becoming president of the Stonewall Jackson Institute in Abingdon , Virginia . From 1885 to 1888 , he was president of the Florida State Agricultural College in Lake City , Florida . In the year 1888 - 89 , F . L . Kern served as President of the college , while Holladay remained , his name appearing thus : " Col . A . Q . Holladay ( of the Universities of Virginia and Berlin ) , Professor of History , English Literature , and Latin . " In 1889 , the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts Board of Trustees appointed Holladay the first chief executive of the college , which later developed into the North Carolina State University . Holladay originally applied for the position of professor of English of the new college . Holladay presided over approximately fifty students during the 1889 - 1890 academic year . After his retirement in 1899 , Holladay spent time in Delaware , New York , and Virginia until failing health brought him back to his daughter ' s home in Raleigh , North Carolina , where he lived until he died and was buried at Raleigh in 1909 . NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center serves as the repository for Alexander Holladay ' s manuscript collection . Connections . Holladay ' s mother was a niece of George Poindexter ( 1779 – 1853 ) , who from 1820 to 1822 had served as the second Governor of Mississippi . He was also related to Lewis Littlepage ( 1762 – 1802 ) , the half - brother of Holladay ' s grandfather , Waller Holladay ( 1776 – 1860 ) . Littlepage had a remarkable career as a diplomat in the service of the last Polish king , Stanisław August Poniatowski , and the Russian Empire . Memorial . The Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal is awarded by the North Carolina State University as the highest honor it can bestow on members of its faculty .