Aubrey H. Camden

Aubrey Heyden Camden (born July 28, 1886) was the second President of the Chatham Training School and first President of Hargrave Military Academy.

Biography

Aubrey Heyden Camden was born at Sedalia in Bedford County, Virginia on July 28, 1886. He grew up on a farm, his beginning education being at a one-room school approximately two miles from his home. The annual instruction period of such schools rarely lasted more than five months. During summer months, Aubrey Camden worked to grow and sell crops in order to pay his school expenses.

In September 1904, he entered Fork Union Military Academy. Camden would graduate from FUMA in 1907. After teaching for one year at a one-room school in Bedford County, Camden enrolled at the University of Richmond, then known as the Richmond College. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from this college in 1911. Camden married Bessie Wheat of Bedford County on September 12, 1911. They had one son, A. Snead Camden, who became a dental surgeon and had five children.

Camden joined the staff of the Chatham Training School in Chatham, Virginia in 1913 after spending two years teaching: one in Alexandria, Virginia and the other at Fork Union Military Academy. Camden was made Dean not long after his arrival, and would stay with the school for a total of thirty-eight years. He succeeded T. Ryland Sanford as President in 1918, serving until his retirement on July 28, 1951, his sixty-fifth birthday. By then, the name of the school had changed, making Camden the second and last President of the Chatham Training School and first President of Hargrave Military Academy. He was elected President-Emeritus by the Hargrave Military Academy Board of Trustees soon after his retirement, and was given a Chevrolet automobile by a number of alumni in appreciation of his years of service to HMA.

Colonel Camden served on the Board of Tax Assessors of Pittsylvania County, as Chairman of the County March of Dimes, and aided the establishment of the Shanaberger Homes following his retirement. As of 1959, he was a member of the Faith Home Board of Trustees. Colonel Camden published a book covering the first fifty years of Hargrave Military Academy history, "Fifty Years of Christian Education in a Baptist School: A Historical Record of Hargrave Military Academy" in the same year.

References

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