John Stewart Bryan

John Stewart Bryan
Bryan pictured in The Colonial Echo 1935, William and Mary yearbook
19th President of the College of William & Mary
In office 1934–1942
Preceded by	J. A. C. Chandler
Succeeded by	John Edwin Pomfret
Personal details
Born	(1871-10-23)October 23, 1871 Henrico County, Virginia
Died	October 16, 1944(1944-10-16) (aged 72) Richmond, Virginia
Alma mater	University of Virginia Harvard University

John Stewart Bryan (October 23, 1871 – October 16, 1944) was the member of a prominent Virginia newspaper family and was the nineteenth president of the College of William and Mary, serving from 1934 to 1942. He also served as the fourth American chancellor of the College from 1942 to 1944.

Prior to his service as president of the College of William and Mary, Bryan served as the publisher of Richmond Times-Dispatch and the president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association.

In 1871, John Stewart Bryan was born in Henrico County, VA to an affluent southern family. Bryan's great grandfather Joseph Bryan had been a congressman from Georgia from 1803 to 1806. His grandfather John Randolph Bryan was tutored by his namesake John Randolph of Virginia and ultimately relocated his family to Gloucester County, Virginia and then Fluvanna County, Virginia. John Stewart Bryan's father served in the Civil War before completing his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1868. By the time John Stewart Bryan was born, his father Joseph Bryan had taken on Richmond tobacco magnate Lewis Ginter as a legal client. In 1887, Bryan's father purchased the Daily Times newspaper (a forerunner of today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch and Media General Corporation) from Ginter.

While his father ran the fledgling Times newspaper, the younger Bryan graduated in 1893 from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and obtained a law degree from Harvard University in 1897. After a brief stint as a lawyer in New York, he returned to Richmond in 1898 to form a joint practice with Murray Mason McGuire. He then quit law to work for his father's newspaper company in 1900.