Brantson Beeson Holder

Biography

Brantson Beeson Holder, known as "B.B.," taught in the Washington and Lee University School of Commerce from 1941 to 1959. At the end of World War II, the W&L law school reached a low enrollment of two students. Dean Moreland had died, and all regular faculty were serving in the military except acting Dean Williams. Wilson Miller, a Lexington attorney, and Professor Holder were called upon to supplement their duties by teaching in the law school. Holder taught torts and agency. By the summer session of 1946, enrollment had increased to such an extent that, though all of the regular law faculty had returned, Holder taught agency then as well. He never taught in a law school before or after this brief period.

Holder was born February 8, 1889 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was an outstanding debater at the University of North Carolina where he received his A.B. and M.A. degrees in 1915. He worked as a high school principal in North Carolina before World War I service from 1917 to 1919. He then read law with a practicing attorney and was admitted to the bar of North Carolina in 1921. Holder practiced law in the 1920s and 1930s, but returned to the University of North Carolina and earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1937. He taught economics at Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania before joining the commerce school faculty of Washington and Lee in 1941.

B. B. Holder and his wife (the former Naomi Dail) owned a tobacco farm in eastern North Carolina. It is here that they moved when Holder retired from W&L in 1959. Holder died July 16, 1960 of a heart attack.