Sims, Edward Drumgoogle

Sims, Edward Drumgoogle, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was born in Brunswick County, Va., March 24, 1805. He graduated at the University of North Carolina in 1823; was tutor in that institution, and afterwards principal of an academy at La Grange, Ala.; and on the establishment of the college at that place was elected professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. He then traveled two years in connection with the Tennessee Conference; afterwards was professor of languages in Randolph Macoan College, Va. In 1836 he visited Europe and spent two years at the University of Halle, in Germany; in 1837 he traveled through France and Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and England; in 1838 he returned to the United States, and filled the chair of English literature in Randolph Macon College; and in December, 1841, was elected by a unanimous vote of the trustees of the University of Alabama to the same department. He died April 12, 1845. Prof. Sims was a man of various, extensive, and accurate learning, especially in the department of language in general. Besides the ordinary classics, he wrote and spoke French and German. He was master of the philosophy of language, and almost the entire circle of the sciences; and had collected materials for an Anglo-Saxon grammar, and also for an English grammar, which he designed publishing. As a minister, the qualities of his mind and piety infused themselves into his preaching and distinguished it. Eminent as he was in learning and the social virtues, his Christian character was his highest ornament. His religion was deeply experimental. See Minutes of Ann. Conferences of M.E. Church, South, 1845-53, p. 48; Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 7, 766. (J.L.S.)