SECOND PERIOD
GERMINATION -ACADEMY AND COLLEGE History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||
II. History of the University Region
The whole region that formed the background of Charlottesville, from whatever point of the compass it might be viewed, differed altogether from the environment of the College of William and Mary.[14] Around Williamsburg, one saw an almost perfectly level country overgrown with a forest of varied species, broken in many places by farms under cultivation or by abandoned fields, and here and there deeply penetrated by winding creeks that ran up into the land from the broad waters of the York and James Rivers. The population that
Unlike this old city, standing upon the wide, wooded coastal plain, Charlottesville was placed in a deep valley spreading from the rampart of the Southwest Mountains, on one side, to the chain of the Blue Ridge, on the other. Towards the south, and not far off, rose the repulsive wall of the Ragged Mountains, while towards the north, the land rolled away as far as the eye could reach. The entire surface of the country, thus pent in on all sides but one, was broken up picturesquely by long, high-shouldered hills, isolated mounts, uneven plateaus, and deep, narrow rocky gorges. Everywhere, it was liberally watered by the romantic Rivanna and its brawling tributary streams, flowing down between ridges that disputed the way so successfully that the channels were forced to follow abrupt and winding courses. The broad scene taken in from some moderate height, that commanded the whole without blending the details, was not surpassed in Virginia for diversified beauty as the seasons, in procession, laid a green or russet or white finger on the face of the landscape below. There, on the western skirts of the valley rose the Blue Mountains, as changeful in color as the mountains of Greece; now as deeply azure as the Bay of Naples itself; now so faint and ethereal in hue as to be almost invisible; now as gray and massive as a cliff of the purest granite; now bare and bleak at the side and crowned with fields of shining snow at the top. In the interval, lay the floor of the valley itself, with a few
To the spectator, thus gazing around from one point of the compass to the other, the rim of the sky appeared to rest upon the massive shoulders of mountain caryatides, with the fast field of the sky itself open to full view as the troops of clouds glided across it, or the storms brewed in its depths, or the last rays of the dying sun flooded it with color. Sky and mountain and plain, -all offered themselves to the eye in stupendous shapes, and only the presence of a large sheet of water was wanting to make a scene upon which nature had bestowed every beautiful and impressive feature in her gift.
Behind this physical charm, that appealed to the eye, there lurked the suggestion of what man had done for the scene that appealed even more romantically to the historic sense. The University of Virginia was incorporated in 1819, and its classical group of buildings, that carry the mind back to the remote age of Greece and Rome, was not finished in 1825, when its doors were opened. Ninety years before the cornerstone of the first pavilion was laid, and less than one hundred before the Rotunda was completed, the region now embraced in Albemarle county was a primaeval wilderness, unoccupied and unclaimed by a single white settler whose name has survived. The first patents to any parts of its virgin soil were acquired in June, 1727. Only two were issued during that year, and they were confined to the area of
Down to 1734, the patentees had, with barely an exception, been prominent men residing in Eastern Virginia, who were influenced alone by the prospect of speculative profit in engrossing such large areas of unappropriated soil, and who made no actual settlement beyond the small degree required by law. This was complied with by
Not until this year, did the engrossment of the soil spread out as far as Buck Mountain Creek, which flows into the Rivanna in the northwestern part of the present county, and Ivy Creek which waters the middle portion. Patents were now obtained to the lands lying around Farmington and Ivy station. By 1737, the banks of Mechums River had been reached. The area of ground thus taken up, however, was not in the way of a solid extension of boundaries; as we have seen, the site of the University was not patented until after the present Birdwood estate had been appropriated; and in harmony with the same fact, it was not until 1737 that William Taylor obtained, by patent, title to the lands situated on Moore's Creek which are supposed to have contained the present site of the town of Charlottesville. By this time, nearly every division of the county had been patented in a very dispersed manner, -to he extended gradually to those intervening spaces which remained vacant because
How little perceptible change had been worked in the face of the county by 1737 is revealed in the situation of Peter Jefferson, who removed to his estate on the Rivanna in the course of that year: the entire region about him is described as having been, at the time, a slumbering, savage wilderness; nor did any substantial transformation in its character take place before 1743, the year of Thomas Jefferson's birth. If one had walked up from Shadwell, during that year, to the top of a neighboring height which commanded a view of the landscape as far as the peaks of the Blue Ridge, he would have had unrolled below him a region almost as untouched by the white man, and quite as unmoulded to the permanent uses of civilization, as it had been one hundred years before, when it was only trodden by the feet of warring or hunting Indians. How completely it was in the possession of wild animals at the time of the first settlement is apparent in the names which the pioneers bestowed on the natural features of the valley. Many varieties of the fourlegged denizens of the original forests are represented in these names. So numerous were deer that it is recorded of one of the earliest settlers on the eastern slope of the great Ridge that he had only to step across the threshold of his cabin in the morning to obtain with his rifle all the venison that would be needed for his food; and that there was no exaggeration in this statement is proven by the frequency with which Buck mountains and Buck creeks are entered on the face of the first maps; and equally indicative of the like condition is the number of Elk runs, Beaver and Bear creeks, Buffalo meadows
There is no surviving proof of the existence of Indian wigwams in Albemarle when the first settlement began, but during Jefferson's boyhood, small bands of warriors would sometimes pass through, and, in one instance at least, revisited a mound standing on the banks of the Rivanna, where their dead had been formerly buried. A deed recorded in 1751, refers, in the definition of boundary lines, to a spot where a pioneer had been scalped by a lurking brave. It was not until 1744, seventy-five years before the University was chartered, that the county had filled up with people enough to justify the General Assembly in organizing a court within its borders; it was not until 1762 that Charlottesville, -named for the queen of the monarch whom Jefferson was to arraign in the Declaration of Independence, -was incorporated; and down to 1820, it continued to be the only post-office in all that region. In 1745, the number of inhabitants within the boundaries of Albemarle was thought to be about 4,250; by 1790, that number, as
SECOND PERIOD
GERMINATION -ACADEMY AND COLLEGE History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||