John H. Bryson letter

John H. Bryson, born 3 April 1831 in Fayetteville, Tennessee, was the son of Rev. Henry Bryson, DD, a minister of the Associate Reformed church, and Hannah McMullen Bryson, sister of Rev. J.P. and Rev. R.B. McMullen, two distinguished ministers of the Southern Presbyterian church in the nineteenth century.

He graduated from Erskine College in South Carolina, and completed his theological studies at Newburg, New York.

He entered the Confederate States of America Army as a chaplain (head of the religious department of the Army of the Tennessee, C.S.A.), serving for the duration of the war.

His first church was in Shelbyville, Tennessee, and after a short while he enrolled as a student at the University of Virginia, supplying the Charlottesville church at the same time. He spent five years in Columbia, South Carolina, and after some time spent travelling in Europe, Egypt, and Palestine, accepted a call to a Presbyterian church in Huntsville, Alabama, where he remained for sixteen years. He was the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which met in Augusta, Georgia, in 1886. He died on 31 January 1897 in Huntsville.