Greenbrier County, West Virginia Biography of RUSSELL W. MONTAGUE. This biography was submitted by Sandy Spradling, E-mail address: This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm History of Greenbrier County J. R. Cole Lewisburg, WV 1917 p. 149-150 RUSSELL W. MONTAGUE. Russell W. Montague was born in Dedham, Mass., a suburb of Boston, and was graduated from Harvard in the class of 1872. His father was a merchant and manufacturer in Boston, and his grandfather, the Rev. William Montague, was the first clergyman of the Episcopal church to preach in England after the Revolution, preaching in St. Paul, London, and Westminster Abbey. After the Revolution' he became rector of the Old North Church in Boston, from the steeple of this church had hung the lights as a signal to Paul Revere. Before entering the ministry he had been a soldier in the Revolution. A tablet erected to his memory in the Old North Church bears, in part, the words: "Juvenis pro patria Senex pro Ecclesia viriliter Militavit" (i. e. As a young man for his Country as an old man for his Church he fought valiantly). After graduating from Harvard, Russell W. Montague studied law and was admitted to the bar of Massachusetts in 1874 and afterwards read law for a time in the Inner Temple in London. In 1876 he moved to Greenbrier, where he has since resided. He married Harriet A. Cary, daughter of Dr. Robert H. Cary. The Carys are a well known family in Boston and the immediate an-cestors of Mrs. Montague lived for nearly 150 years in the Cary house in Chelsea, Mass., built in 1635 and now owned by the Society for the Preservation of Colonial Homes. One of Mrs. Montague's cousins married Louis Agassiz, the naturalist, and was herself dean of Radcliffe for a number of years. Another cousin married Cornelius C. Felton, the president of Harvard College. Of the two children born to Mr. and Mrs. R. W. Montague, the Rev. R. Cary Montague is rector of Grace Church, Elkins, W. Va. He married Margretta McGuire, daughter of the distinguished surgeon, Hunter McGuire, of Richmond, Va. The daughter, Margaret Prescott Montague, has devoted herself to literature and has published the following books: The Poet, Miss Kate and I; The Song of Alderson Cree; In Calvert's Valley; Linda; Closed Poors, and numerous short stories and a few poems, principally published in the Atlantic Monthly. Her last story, up to this time, "By Waters and the Spirit," appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1916. She comes rightly by her literary gift. Her father is a first cousin of Harriet Prescott Spofford and her grandmother was a cousin of William Prescott, the historian.