James Maury's name is best known in histories in connection with the Parson's Cause; however, he established in his won day a wide reputation as an exceptionally able, hardworking minister, a thorough and inspiring teacher, a competent essayist, and a deeply spiritual man. From 1752 until his death, Maury conducted what Richard Beale Davis has called "one of the best genuinely private schools in the [colonial] South," whose pupils included Thomas Jefferson, James Madison (Virginia's first bishop and a president of the College of William and Mary), James Monroe, Dabney Carr the elder, and Maury's son James. Maury was one of the most learned classical scholars of his day and at his death left a major colonial Virginia library of some four hundred titles and forty-four pamphlets (probably more than five hundred volumes). In addition, he was the patriarch of a great American family which included his son James...