- 1855

Section A, Lot 26, Grave 2
-- See section's Lot Layout map

Inscription and Notes:

Age 69.
In the vault with Sarah Louisa Terrell, his daughter, and W. Eliza Terrell, his wife
Government Service.
[Inferior Court 1808-1810. Ga House of
Reps 1810-1813. U.S. Congress 1817-1821.
Ga State Senate 1847.]

William Terrell

William Terrell was a physician and planter and played an important role in the advance of Hancock County and Georgia agriculture. Terrell was a founder and first president of the Hancock Planters' Club and in 1854 donated $20,000 to the University of Georgia to endow the nation's first fully endowed professorship of agriculture. An earlier chair at Yale had an endowment of only $5000 (per Forrest Shivers, The Land Between, 1990, p. 80).

William Terrell also contributed financial support and was a member of the Board of Advisement for the Sparta Female Model School. Established in 1831, this school adopted teaching methods developed at the Rensselaer School (now Rensselaer Polytechnic) in Troy, New York, through which actual experiments and lectures were conducted by students. The Sparta Female Model School was initially quite successful and drew students from all over Georgia and even a few from Alabama and Florida, but financial and other difficulties forced its relocation to Fort Gaines, Georgia, in 1838. Terrell died in 1855, according to the plaque upon his tomb.

During the Civil War a four-gun battery from Hancock County fought in his honor as the Terrell Light Artillery. Terrell County, Georgia, bears his name.

See others in this cemetery lot.