Rev. Dr. Horace Dale Douty was born and raised in Rockbridge but has lived much of his adult life elsewhere. A graduate of Washington and Lee University, Dr. Douty earned his advanced degrees from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. He also graduated from the Clinical School of Pastoral Care at Wake Forest University.
Over the last 60 years, Dr. Douty has served Presbyterian churches in Virginia and also North Carolina. He and his wife Ellen moved to Rockbridge in 2004, and he became pastor for the historic Oxford Presbyterian Church near Lexington the following year. The congregation's unwavering interest in the stories of Oxford prompted Dr. Douty to offer weekly "history lessons" before each Sunday's sermon. Those lessons are now preserved in Volumes I & II of this book, with his hope the stories endure.
The Doutys' current home stands next door to the Thorn Hill Estate built in the 1780s by John and Magdalena Bowyer, who figured prominently in the earliest settlement of Borden's Grant and the founding of Lexington. Since no one knows the final resting place of the beautiful Magdalena, the Doutys gave their hilltop estate her name in an effort to perpetuate her memory. It was his research into Magdalena's life that first ignited Dr. Douty's curiosity about the area's history and began his Oxford writings.
