By William “Skip” Deegans
Born in 1844 on Anthony’s Creek in Greenbrier County, Virginia, Milton Humphreys became one of the preeminent Greek scholars in the United States. His father was a blacksmith, and he was the seventh of twelve children. He learned to read at an uncommonly early age and showed an affinity for mathematics. He attended a little log schoolhouse in Irish Corner, but his unusual intellect was recognized by a traveling Presbyterian minister who arranged for Humphreys to attend the Mercer Academy in Charleston.
Humphreys entered Washington College (now Washington & Lee University) but left in 1862 to join the Confederate Army as an artilleryman. He served in Bryan’s Battery, and was the first to conceive of indirect firing on the enemy. Previously, soldiers shot at targets they could see. Humphreys was able to calculate the trajectory of a shell, determine its range, and figure where it would land. By doing so, weapons could be hidden, and the enemy could not see who was firing nor from where. Humphrey’s method was successfully first applied in a battle in Fayetteville, West Virginia.
After the Civil War, Humphreys returned to Washington College where he graduated first in his class and stayed on to teach under the college’s president, Robert E. Lee.
Humphreys took a leave of absence to study Greek and Latin in Germany where he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Leipzig. Washington College, under Humphrey’s direction, was the first college in the United States to insist on the Roman pronunciation of Latin. Humphreys went on to teach and design the first Greek studies curriculum at the newly-formed Vanderbilt College and was on the original faculty at the University of Texas. Eventually, he and his family settled in Charlottesville where he taught Greek for 25 years at the University of Virginia. He died in 1928 and is buried in the University of Virginia cemetery.
Photo: Courtesy of West Virginia University Regional History Center.
Sources: The West Virginia News, Rutgers University, Roanoke Times, The Daily News Leader, www.history.net.
