Representative James John Faran

John Garland James (December 1, 1844 – February 12, 1930) was an American Civil War veteran, educator, banker, and academic administrator who became the second president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). He was born in Palmyra, Fluvanna County, Virginia, on December 1, 1844, to Henry James and Eliza Maria (Wills) James. He was one of three sons, with an older brother, Charles Albert James, and a younger brother, Fleming Wills James. The James family background and early life in rural Virginia helped shape his later commitment to disciplined study, public service, and educational leadership.

James entered the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) during the Civil War and combined his education with active military service in the Confederate Army. As a VMI cadet, he took part in the Battle of New Market on May 15, 1864, serving as a color guard and third corporal; his younger brother Fleming fought alongside him. He later participated in the intermediate defensive lines during the evacuation of Richmond in 1865, experiences that reinforced his lifelong belief in the value of military discipline and training. Returning to his studies after the war, he completed his course at VMI with distinction, graduating with second honors on July 4, 1866 (often cited as 1867 in later accounts). During his time at VMI, James also became closely associated with the founding of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. On opening day of classes, October 16, 1865, he was invited by Otis Allan Glazebrook, the valedictorian of the class of 1866 and primary founder of Alpha Tau Omega, to join the new fraternity. That evening Glazebrook and Alfred Marshall administered the oaths of membership, making James the first initiate of Alpha Tau Omega and a charter member of its Alpha Chapter. A contemporary photograph of James in cadet uniform shows him wearing his ΑΤΩ badge, and Glazebrook later remarked that “James was the profoundest scholar I ever knew.”

Immediately after graduating from VMI, James embarked on a career in education. From 1866 to 1867 he served as a professor at the Kentucky Military Institute, beginning a long association with military-style schooling. In 1867, James and his entire family moved to Bastrop, Texas, where he quickly emerged as a leading figure in regional education. By 1868 he was president of the Texas Military Institute, serving simultaneously as superintendent, business manager, and professor of philosophy and mathematics. His father, Henry James, his brothers, Charles Albert and Fleming Wills James, and his friend and fellow VMI alumnus Hardaway Hunt Dinwiddie all assisted in the enterprise. Seeking a broader base of support and a more central location, James moved the school to Austin, Texas, where he conducted it from 1870 through 1879. During this period he also conceived and compiled a school reader and speaker devoted entirely to Southern authors and orators, resulting in the publication of “The Southern Student’s Hand-Book of Selections for Reading and Oratory” by A. S. Barnes and Company in 1879, with a revised edition appearing less than a year later. The mid-1870s also brought personal loss: his brother Charles, who had contracted tuberculosis in a northern prison camp during the Civil War and had come to Texas partly for his health, died in 1875 at the age of 34. After 1875, James broadened his public service by becoming a member of the board of visitors of the United States Naval Academy, reflecting his growing national reputation in military and higher education.

James’s educational leadership in Texas led to his appointment as the second president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas in November 1879. He moved to College Station accompanied by his colleague and fellow VMI and Alpha Tau Omega member, Hardaway Hunt Dinwiddie. His predecessor, Thomas S. Gathright, and the entire faculty had been dismissed following a bitter and highly publicized rift among faculty members, a controversy documented in detail in the Galveston Daily News. When James assumed office, he faced a demoralized institution with declining enrollment and a tarnished public image. By 1881 the number of cadets had fallen to about 90. James focused his efforts on strengthening the Corps of Cadets, improving facilities, and restoring public confidence. He taught mental and moral philosophy and political economy, and he strongly defended the military component of the curriculum mandated by the Morrill Act. He argued that “the military system of school government… tends to develop in the student a high sense of personal honor and moral responsibility, and to give him those habits of regularity, promptness, self-reliance, and respect for proper authority, which go far to make the good citizen and the successful man of business. It thus becomes a potent factor in the formation of true character.” Under his leadership, enrollment rebounded, and by the spring of 1882 the student body had surged to approximately 250 cadets, prompting James to remark that the college would be “full to overflowing.”

The revival of the college under James was soon tested by events beyond his control. In late 1882 and early 1883, a series of illnesses—reported as influenza, measles, dysentery, and related disorders—swept through the campus, resulting in the deaths of about a dozen cadets and a faculty member. Rumors spread across Texas that the fatalities were due to the allegedly unhealthy location of the college, undermining public confidence and threatening enrollment just as the newly established University of Texas opened in early 1883 and began competing for students and political support. Concerned about conditions at the college, a special committee of the Texas Legislature visited the campus in 1881 and later reported that the institution’s earlier “retrograde tendency” was due largely to “the serious misunderstanding with the faculty and not the cadets,” implicitly exonerating the student body and affirming the direction taken under James’s administration. The committee also rejected the charge that military training was given “too much prominence,” concluding instead that “the military feature is of no disadvantage.” Despite these endorsements, James grew increasingly frustrated by the chronic shortage of resources, the difficulty of securing political backing in Austin, and the persistent negative publicity. He submitted his resignation effective April 1, 1883, stepping down after a tenure marked by both significant institutional rebuilding and severe external challenges. Even after leaving office, he remained a supporter of the college, maintaining correspondence with state officials, faculty, and friends, and continuing to advocate for its welfare.

James’s departure from Texas A&M coincided with a transition in his personal and professional life. On February 6, 1883, he married Clara White (Brigham) Trowbridge, a widow with two daughters from a previous marriage. On April 1, 1883, the same day he left the presidency of the college, he joined his brother Fleming in a banking venture in Colorado, Texas. Shifting from education to finance, he quickly established himself in the banking community. By 1884 he had moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, where he became president of the Panhandle National Bank. His career in banking and business extended into the early twentieth century, and around 1906 he began to focus more heavily on mortgages and real estate. During this period he lived in Roff, Oklahoma, from about 1900 to 1929, remaining active in commercial and civic affairs while continuing his intellectual pursuits.

Throughout his later years, James retained the scholarly habits and broad cultural interests that had distinguished him as a young man. In a self-reflective statement written at age 79, he described himself as still feeling young, mentally and physically active, able to walk ten or twelve miles, and capable of sustaining as much work as ever. He emphasized his lifelong temperance, noting that he had never used tobacco or been addicted to strong drink, and observed that he had devoted his life largely to pursuits other than money-making, concluding that he was “better off, I reckon, than if I had a million dollars as a millstone around my neck.” His greatest pleasure, he wrote, was his library, modest in size but rich in works that interested him, particularly literature from the Spanish-American republics, the Philippine Islands, and the West Indies. He reported owning approximately 1,500 volumes in Spanish and about 500 volumes in French—mainly on the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the Ancien Régime—as well as works in Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, and dialects of Spanish and French, reflecting his fondness for modern languages. His connection to Alpha Tau Omega also endured. In 1929, more than six decades after his initiation, he visited the University of Oklahoma chapter to witness an initiation ceremony, his first in-person interaction with the fraternity in many years. Reflecting on the experience, he remarked, “The fraternity has always been so precious to me, but now I love it more than ever.”

In declining health near the end of his life, James traveled to Dallas, Texas, in 1929 to seek medical attention. He died there on February 11, 1930, at the age of 85, after an extended illness. Two days later he was buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Austin, Texas. Remembered as a profound scholar, a disciplined soldier, a pioneering educator, and a civic-minded banker, John Garland James left a legacy that linked the military and academic traditions of the post–Civil War South with the emerging land-grant college movement in Texas and the broader development of higher education in the United States.