Bryson, Thomas A., 1931-

Thomas Archer "Tom" Bryson III was born March 16, 1931 in Savannah, Georgia. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard the U.S.S. Henrico during the Korean Conflict 1950-1954. Bryson received an A.B. degree in History from Georgia Southern College in 1958, a M.A. degree in History from the University of Georgia in 1960, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Georgia in 1965. His dissertation was entitled Woodrow Wilson, the Senate, Public Opinion and the Armenian Mandate Question, 1919-1920. He married Olivia Anne Sloss in 1960. They were the parents of two children: Olivia Anne Bryson and Thomas Sloss Bryson. Bryson taught at Savannah High School, the University of Georgia, and DeKalb College before coming to West Georgia College in 1967 as assistant professor of history. He was promoted to associate professor in 1972. Dr. Bryson died suddenly on June 10, 1980, having recently been promoted to professor effective September 1980. His primary research interest was United States-Middle East relations. Bryson was a member of the American Historical Association, the Southern Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the National Society for Armenian Studies. He was the author of more than thirty articles and seven books including American Diplomacy in the Middle East (1975), Walter George Smith (1977), American Diplomatic Relations With the Middle East, 1784-1975: A Survey (1977), An American Consular Officer in the Middle East in the Jacksonian Era: A Biography of William Brown Hodgson, 1801-1871 (1979), United States/Middle East Diplomatic Relations: An Annotated Bibliography, 1784-1978 (1979), Tars, Turks, and Tankers: the Role of the United States Navy in the Middle East, 1800-1979 (1980), and Seeds of Mideast Crisis: the United States Diplomatic Role in the Middle East During World War II (1981).

Walter George Smith (1854-1924), according to Bryson, was a "lawyer, progressive reformist, and international humanist. In 1877, Smith began his career as a Philadelphia lawyer and three years later helped to form the Young Men's Democratic Association. In 1885, Justice John F. Dillon admitted him to practice before the United States Supreme Court. He was active in urban reform and perhaps his greatest contribution in the Progressive era was in the movement to create uniform state commercial and divorce laws. In the early 1920s before his death, Smith participated in relief work for the Armenians in attempts to bring them peace and food. In advocating the Armenian cause, he and his co-workers were able to influence the course of American diplomacy with Turkey." (Bryson, Walter George Smith. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of American Press, 1977)

William Brown Hodgson (1800-1871) was born on September 1, 1800, in Washington, D.C., and despite not attending college, mastered thirteen languages which proved very beneficial during his career. In 1832, he became official interpreter for Turkey. "In 1834 Hodgson was sent to Egypt to ascertain the practicability of carrying on commercial relations with that country. In 1836, he served in London, England, and the following year he was at a desk in Washington, D.C. Soon thereafter, he was dispatched on a mission to Lima, Peru, to deliver a treaty of peace, friendship, and commerce with the new Peru-Bolivian Confederation. After another stint in the nation's capital, Hodgson was appointed in 1841 to his first consular post--as consul general in Tunis, Tunisia--by U.S. secretary of state Daniel Webster. In Paris, France, on his way to Tunis, Hodgson met and fell in love with Savannah native Margaret Telfair, a member of the prominent Telfair family, who was traveling on the European continent with her sisters. Telfair agreed to marry him on the condition that he resign his post in Tunis. Hodgson accepted her terms, and they were married in July 1842 at St. George's Church in London." In 1845, Hodgson was elected curator of the Georgia Historical Society. He devoted most of the rest of his life to scholarship and received numerous honors during his lifetime including an honorary doctor of laws from Princeton University. Hodgson died in June of 1871 and in 1876, a new headquarters and library for the Georgia Historical Society was constructed and dedicated in his honor. (from New Georgia Encyclopedia)