Advice to legislatures, trustees, or communities was given when asked but so tactfully that neither resentment nor suspicion was aroused.
Before his death, Dr.Sears had chosen Dr.J.L.M.

Curry as his successor, and the choice was promptly ratified by the trustees.

Dr.
Curry was a thorough Southerner, a veteran of both the Mexican and the Civil War.

He had first practiced law and had sat in the House of Representatives of the United States and of the Confederate States.

At the time of his election to the management of the Peabody Fund he was a professor in Richmond College, Virginia, and a minister of the Baptist Church.