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Margaret Junkin Preston, the “Poetess of the Confederacy,” is well known in Lexington, and beyond, for her epic poem “Beechenbook” and many other literary works, but her husband, John Thomas Lewis Preston, deserves at least as much historical interest, the newest “Rockbridge Epilogue” asserts.
Local historian Richard Halseth is the author of the article about Preston, who in 1834 first proposed that the state arsenal, located in Lexington, should become a college, devoted to educating young men in practical as well as military matters. The idea took hold, and two years later the state legislature voted to establish the Virginia Military Institute.
Preston led the move to hire Francis H. Smith as the school’s first superintendent, and then he became a faculty member at the college which he had helped found.
In 1857, Margaret Junkin, daughter of the former president of next-door Washington College, became his second wife.
He taught at VMI until retirement in 1882, and remained in Lexington until his death in 1890. “Why should I take a trip?” he once said. “There is not another place in the world as pleasant to me as just where I am sitting.” Preston Library at the institute is named for him.
Halseth’s article is available, free, at www.HistoricRockbridge. org. “Rockbridge Epilogues” is the online series of scholarly articles, published with the endorsement of the Rockbridge Historical Society and Historic Lexington Foundation.
