At the request of the Board, Rev. B. R. Duval and Rev. Nathaniel Thomas were appointed Agents for the College. They were men of extraordinary energy and zeal, and they at once entered on a thorough canvass of the Conference in raising funds for the College. President Smith entered on his duties with characteristic zeal. He was fortunately possessed of an unconquerable will and a buoyancy of disposition, without which he would have quailed under the discouragements under which he labored. "Wm. A. Smith was born in Fredericksburg, Va., November 29, 1802. His mother was a consistent member of the Methodist Church, and in death prayed that her son might live to preach the glorious gospel. His father was a man of honorable character and position. Both died when he was of a tender age. For a time the orphan boy had rough usage; but he was afterwards adopted and raised by Mr. Russell Hill, a friend of his father, and a worthy merchant of Petersburg. When seventeen years old, he was converted, and joined the M. E. Church. He had received a good English education, and had commenced the study of the classics; but feeling that he was called of God to the ministry, and not being able to attend college as he desired, he studied privately one year at the home of his uncle, Mr. Porter, in Orange county, and taught school two or three years in Madison. In 1824 he travelled the Gloucester circuit under the Presiding Elder; in February, 1825, he was admitted on trial into the Virginia Conference. In 1833, while Agent for Randolph-Macon College, then in its infancy, he met with a fearful accident: the carriage which he was driving upset and fell on him, breaking his right thigh and dislocating his left hip, and badly laming him for life. He was a delegate to the General Conference of the M. E. Church every session from 1832 to 1844, and occupied a high position in that great council as an adviser and debater. In the memorable appeal case of Harding, and in the yet more important extrajudicial trial of Bishop Andrew, which led to the division of the church, he won a reputation wide as the United States, and inferior to that of no minister of any denomination, for the highest deliberative and forensic eloquence. He was a member of the Louisville Convention which organized the M. E. Church, South, and of all the General Conferences of this church to the date of his death. He commanded universal respect and confidence among his brethren by the sincerity of his zeal, the wisdom of his counsels, and the power of his reasoning. His impress will long remain on the legislation and institutions of Southern Methodism. In 1846 he was called from the regular pastorate, by the urgency of the Trustees of Randolph-Macon College, sanctioned by the Virginia Conference, to the Presidency of this institution. He was selected for that place because his courage, energy and strength of intellect seemed indispensable not only to the prosperity, but even to the saving of this noble