The University of Virginia Library, 1825-1950 : :: :: University of Virginia Library

Baker had been a student at the University of Virginia
and a soldier in the Confederate Army. As a soldier he had
taken part in only one battle, but in that he had displayed
supreme courage. The story of his bravery under fire seems
to have become widely known, and it may have been a
contributing cause for this recognition by the Board of
Visitors.

He had been born in Middleburg, Loudoun County,
Virginia, 17 October 1834. He was seventeen when he
matriculated at the University of Virginia, and he continued
as a student for three sessions, 1851–1853 and 1855–
1856. He was teaching in a school near Culpeper when the
war broke out. A gentle and diffident youth, he seemed
little fitted to be a soldier. Yet he enlisted in a cavalry
company recruited in Loudoun, his home county, and he
gained promotion to the rank of Orderly Sergeant.

The company was attached to the command of the
dashing J. E. B. Stuart, then a Colonel. At the First Battle
of Manassas, that company and another were ordered to
dislodge a body of Northern soldiers concealed in some
woods. Too late it was discovered that the hidden troops
comprised a whole brigade. But the small Confederate force
did not pause to reason why. The charge was made in the
face of a withering fire. Sergeant Baker was hit in the knee,

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but he did not waver. A bullet broke his arm. Yet he still
galloped on. Then his horse was killed under him, a shot
pierced his body, and he was flung headlong on the ground.
There he lay while the battle raged above him. Finally the
Northern forces withdrew and the sorely wounded Sergeant
could be given treatment by an army doctor. He was
moved to a field hospital. The tale of his gallantry spread
abroad, and Colonel Stuart sent him a personal letter of
commendation, offering promotion and a place on the
Colonel's staff. But it had been found necessary that his leg
be amputated—and his army days were over.

In time Baker recovered, and went back to the milder
disciplines of teaching. He found an opening in southwest
Virginia and became the headmaster of a boys' school in
Abingdon. It was while he was there that the offer came of
the librarianship at his University.

He was appointed both Librarian and Secretary of the
Faculty, but not Secretary of the Board of Visitors. Since
Winston no Librarian has held the Visitors' secretaryship—
that is, in the period covered by this history. As it happens,
Baker was the last Librarian to be Secretary of the Faculty.
He was also permitted, as Winston had been, to occupy a
house “west of Dawson's Row.” To this permission the
Board of Visitors, who were keeping a tight rein on the
finances, cautiously added: “but without any expenditure
for repairs.”

The five years of Baker's tenure of the office were not
marked by untoward events—or by toward ones, for that
matter. According to approximations recorded in the University
Catalogues, the number of volumes increased from
48,000 to 50,000. The growth in student enrollment was
more rapid, from 301 to 472. Baker had appreciation of the
value of books and familiarity with the needs of students;
and his duties were faithfully performed—though daily to
the point of exhaustion because of his physical handicaps.

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Meantime, in 1888, Frederick Page had been called
back from the position he was occupying as Deputy Clerk
of Albemarle County to fill a newly created office, that of
Clerk to the Chairman of the Faculty. By 1891 it seemed
wise again to make a separation of offices. This time Page
was asked to resume the librarianship, and the offices of
Secretary of the Faculty and Clerk to the Chairman were
combined and offered to Baker, these two posts demanding
from him less physical exertion. Baker continued to hold
the dual secretaryships until his death on 21 November
1902.

While he was holding this double post, there was one
more day in the old Sergeant's life when he was suddenly
called upon for heroic effort. That was the day of the burning
of the Rotunda. When news of the conflagration reached
him, Baker, limping on his crutch, with desperate effort
hurried to the office of the Secretary of the Faculty, which
was in the lower part of the building, and there remained
“against remonstrance until every record, every book, every
paper in the office under his charge had been removed to a
place of safety.”

The quotation is from the master pen of Chairman
Thornton and is taken from a moving article which was
contributed to the Alumni Bulletin of April 1903, following
Baker's death. To that article we owe much of what is
known about this appealing figure. In it his character is
thus summarized by the Chairman of the Faculty:—

For five years after his [Baker's] appointment as Secretary the
writer came into daily and hourly contact with him. He learned
thus to know his many admirable qualities, to realize the simplicity
and sincerity of his nature, and to estimate at their true worth his
lofty sense of duty and the genuine modesty of his spirit. He possessed
but little power of initiative, and shunned responsibility when
he could fitly avoid it. It was necessary to give a certain general
guidance and direction to him in all his work. But his industry was
unwearied, his fidelity unwavering. A perfectly loyal man, he was

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worthy of implicit trust, however delicate or however trivial the
confidence; a perfectly sincere man, he never sought to cover up an
error or hide a gap; a perfectly faithful man, he spared neither
strength nor pains to finish his task and complete the work given
him to do.

That was the simple and consistent story of a lifetime.
On one day in his twenties and on another day when he
was sixty-one, that deep-lying sense of responsibility and of
obedience to command brought him face to face with violent
emergencies. The change was in the circumstances, not in
the character; and in those crises it was the resolution and latent
heroism of a life of steadfast fidelity that stood revealed.