George W. Burroughs received his early education, as well as home training, from his mother and afterward attended public and high schools in Mississippi, while in 1914 he was graduated from Bethel College with the Bachelor of Arts degree. He next matriculated in Vanderbilt University, which conferred upon him the Master of Arts degree in 1920, and from the same institution he received his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1923. He was employed on his father's farm through his youth, remaining under the parental roof until he reached the age of seventeen years, after which he provided for his own support and worked his way through college. He began preaching when a youth of but seventeen years and in 1908 was ordained to the ministry. He devoted a year to preaching in Mississippi, after which he took charge of the McKenzie school, with which he was connected for four years, and then spent six years at Milan. In 1920 he became pastor of the First Cumberland Presbyterian church of Chattanooga and under his able efforts the church is steadily growing numerically and spiritually. Rev. Burroughs is also one of the trustees of the McKenzie Theological College and of Bethel College and does everything in his power to further intellectual and moral progress. In 1915 Mr. Burroughs was married to Miss Opal M. Pratt, a daughter of Dr. Thomas Pratt of McKenzie, a well known physician and a descendant of one of the early colonial families represented on American soil since pre-Revolutionary war days. Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs have become parents of two sons, George W. and Thomas. Politically Mr. Burroughs is a democrat but has had neither time nor inclination to seek or fill public office. He was active in home work during the World war and has always manifested marked devotion to duty in relation to the country's welfare.

Fraternally he is connected with the Masons and with the Junior Order United American Mechanics. He is what the world calls a self-made man. In his struggles to equip himself for his chosen calling he met with many privations and hardships, working in various ways in order to obtain the funds necessary for his educational training. Even after completing his course of study it is related that upon one occasion he was called to a pastorate and had to sell his Bible in order to pay his railroad fare. His earnestness of purpose, his untiring zeal and his determination are now manifest in his pastoral service, and the church under his direction is steadily growing. He believes in the encouragement of the social features of church life and has secured in addition to the church property a three-story residence which is devoted to Sunday school and social service. He feels that the young people should be kept interested and is doing everything possible to hold their attention, presenting to them tangible proof of the fact that the greatest happiness is found in intellectual stimulus and strict adherence to Christian teachings. This is the real path of liberty, for the individual who walks therein is never hampered by a knowledge of sin, by a consciousness of guilt or by a feeling that there is something in his life that must be covered. He is free as the air in his knowledge of having nothing to conceal and that his lines of life are cast in the field of broad world betterment.