University of Virginia Library

X. Site of the College Selected

The space that has been used in describing the personalities
of Jefferson, Cabell, and Cocke is fully warranted
in the light of a fact that will become increasingly perceptible
as our theme advances; namely, that the establishment
of the University of Virginia was not dictated by an
irresistible popular impulse, but was due primarily to
the unwearied exertions of Jefferson and Cabell; and its
actual construction to Jefferson, assisted throughout with
ability and fidelity by the modest Cocke in the background.
Unless we take in the public spirit that had previously
animated these men, we cannot arrive at a perfectly accurate
conception of all the influences in which the institution
had its origin. We have now to relate the story of
the practical work which was done in founding it, for, as
we shall see, the incorporation of Central College was
really the incorporation of the University; the history of
the College is the history of the University in its chrysalis
state, which must be studied if we are to understand correctly

the first phase of its existence. It is in this phase
that we discern the embryo of the nobler structure to follow;
the springs as it were of the stream which was so
soon to begin to flow in full volume; the slender sapling
that was so soon to grow into a fruitful tree.

Among those features inherited from the College which
became highly characteristic of the University was its official
organization, its system of administration, its plans
for buildings, and its requirements for professors. The
provisions of the Act of Incorporation of Central College
show as plainly as the design for its construction how long
the thought of a university had been simmering in Jefferson's
consciousness, for when the real university was determined
upon a few years afterwards, the only alterations
made in those provisions were such as were called
for by the widening of the scope of the original scheme.
One of the first clauses in the charter of Central College
reveals that it was this future university, and not the present
college, that he had most vividly in mind: the Governor
of Virginia was to be the patron of the new seat of
learning; and there was to be a board of six visitors by
his appointment. Jefferson himself informs us that this
provision was inserted for the explicit purpose of "divesting
the situation of the College of all local character and
control, and placing it under the will of those who represented
the Legislature." The visitors were to hold office
for a term of three years; were to come together at
least once in the course of each twelve months; were to
possess the right to choose a treasurer and proctor; to
select the professors, determine their salaries and fees,
and prescribe their courses of instruction; to lay down
rules for the discipline of the students, and adopt regulations
for their lodging and board; to overlook in a general
way the officers, agents, and servants in the performance

of their respective duties; and, finally, to draw up
such by-laws as would be needed to conserve the general
welfare of the institution, and protect and increase its
estate.

The treasurer was to continue in office during the
pleasure of the Board, and was only to pay out moneys
in obedience to their specific or general instructions. The
title to all the college property was to be invested in the
proctor as trustee; suits were to be brought in his name;
and he alone was to receive donations and subscriptions.
He was to be the custodian of the buildings and all other
estate in the College's possession; the provider and dispenser
of the food and fuel that would be required by
the students; the immediate overseer of the agents and
servants; and the personal medium through whom all the
orders, laws, and regulations of the Board were to be carried
out.

By the Act of Incorporation, Central College became
the beneficiary of all the rights and claims of Albemarle
Academy. The only certain income which it could expect
to enjoy at an early date consisted of the subscriptions,
which had been pledged, chiefly, it would seem, by the citizens
of the surrounding region; and the money accruing
from the sale of the glebe lands in Fredericksville and St.
Anne's parishes. No steps had been taken as yet to swell
these funds by means of the lottery which had been authorized.
It was due to the emptiness of its coffers that, although
the College was chartered in February, 1816,
more than twelve months passed before the Board of Visitors
assembled. If the proceeds of the glebe sales had
been received from the commissioner of the county in the
meanwhile, the amount was looked upon by them, previous
to that meeting, as too small to justify them in buying a
site and laying the foundation stone.

Apparently, it was not until April 8, 1817, that the
Visitors endeavored to hold a sitting, and even on that
occasion, only three were present; namely, Jefferson, Cabell
and Cocke. As a quorum was wanting, no business
was transacted beyond fixing upon May 5 as the date for
the convening of the whole Board; but the real purpose of
the three Visitors was perhaps to inspect a site for the
College which had been offered to Jefferson, and which
he, probably, thought should be secured, at least optionally,
at once. This was done; and when the full Board
met on the day appointed, one of their first acts was to
ratify this provisional purchase. Jefferson's preference
had been for the ground situated on the first ridge lying
to the east of the present site of the University, property
that belonged to John Kelly, a member of the former
board of trustees of Albemarle Academy. Kelly is
said to have been a Federalist in political creed; and for
this reason, it is reported, the purpose for which the land
was to be bought, and Jefferson's connection with it, were
kept secret when the tender for it was made. It is quite
probable, however, that he had a more personal motive
for disliking the master of Monticello. We learn from
the recollections of Alexander Garrett, that, when the first
suggestion came up of converting Albemarle Academy
into Central College, the trustees, presumably Kelly
among them, proposed that the new institution should be
named Jefferson College, and that Jefferson emphatically
objected to this, and recommended "Central College"
instead. If Kelly, as one of the trustees, was ready to
honor his distinguished neighbor so signally at this time,
there must have been some reason besides his Federalism
why he, one year later, was so brusque in declining the
tender for his property; and that reason, as we have already
surmised, was his possible resentment at the summary

dropping of the old board of trustees. So soon
as he found out that Jefferson was behind that offer, he
turned his back on all further negotiation: "I will see
him at the devil," he exclaimed, "before he shall have it
at any price." When this rough and abrupt reply was
carried to Jefferson, he quietly remarked, "The man is
a fool, but if we cannot get the best site, we must be content
with the best we can get."[15]

Perhaps, he would not have taken his disappointment
so philosophically had he not felt that the land belonging
to John M. Perry, lying to the west of Charlottesville
also, but at a somewhat greater distance, afforded a fairly
satisfactory substitute. This site was formed by a narrow
ridge that sloped gently from north to south. It
fell sharply away from the eastern edge of the small
plateau at its top, and from the western edge spread
downward here and there in a declivity quite as marked.
Although this site was on very high ground, the view of
the Blue Ridge must have always been screened more or
less by the former Carr's Hill and the present Preston
Heights. The Southwest Mountains,—which were then,
as now, directly in the scope of the vision,—shut out the
horizon too closely at hand to make the scene in that
quarter as impressive as the grand spectacle of the Blue
Ridge would have done in the other, had a site been
obtainable which would have offered an unobstructed
outlook on that splendid chain. In a country distinguished
for its magnificent landscapes, the spot chosen for
the Central College commanded not one entirely; not
even from the future northern portico of the Rotunda.

This was the first drawback. The second lay in the

fact that the trend of the slope required that all the
buildings, with the exception of those on the northern line,
—the southern line was expected to remain open,—
should face east and west. The architect Latrobe pointed
out the practical disadvantage of this arrangement before
the first pavilion had been erected. "Everyone," he
wrote Jefferson in August, 1817, "who has had the misfortune
to reside in a house,—especially if it constituted
a part of a range of houses, facing east and west,—has
experienced both in summer and winter the evils of such
an aspect. In the winter, the accumulation of snow on
the east, and the severity of the cold on the west, together
with the absence of the sun during three fourths of
the day, and in the summer, the horizontal rays of the
morning sun heating the east side and the evening sun
burning the west side, of the house, render such a situation
highly exceptional." To this critical but thoroughly
practical suggestion, Jefferson replied by saying that "the
lay of the ground was a law of nature to which they
were bound to conform," but that the objection urged
could be partially overcome, first, by placing but one family
room in each pavilion in front, and one or two in flank,
and leaving apertures for windows in the southern wall.
The lecture-room below, he added, could be given "the
same advantage by substituting an open passage adjacent
instead of dormitory." He conceded, however, that
"the dormitories admitted of no relief but Venetian
blinds to their windows and doors." "There," he said,
"the heat would be less felt because the young men would
be in the school-rooms most of the day."

There was perhaps a third drawback,—one, however,
that had so little practical importance that it does not
seem to have come up for consideration in the selection
of a site for the proposed group of buildings. If anyone

will take position at the foot of the last terrace of the
Lawn towards the south, and follow the east and west
lines of the pillars in front of the pavilions and dormitories,
as far as the line of the Rotunda, the impression
is a more or less blended one, since the pillars, in that
perspective, appear to run together to such an extent as
to form to the eye a continuous white mass. The nobility
of the Rotunda alone relieves the too solid effect of
the almost indistinguishable individual features of the
pavilion and dormitory fronts. Had the academic village
been erected in a circular form, after the model of
the great square of St. Peter's at Rome, the result would
probably have been more striking because then each
pavilion and each column of the arcades would have stood
out distinctly from their respective fellows, with the Rotunda
rising in stately dignity at the northern opening of
the architectural circumference. But neither the nature
of the ground, nor the bent of Jefferson's taste, nor the
practical character of his scheme, whether for the buildings
or for the professorships, permitted this finer and
more impressive disposition of the numerous structures
he had in view. In his earliest plans, there was no arrangement
for the East and West Ranges, for, in the
beginning, he was contriving simply for Central College,
which might or might not become the University of Virginia,
with its far broader need of accommodation for an
ever increasing number of teachers and pupils. Had he
been designing for what was certainly to be the supreme
State institution so soon as finished, with a large attendance
of students and an ample endowment fund assured,
it is remotely possible that the plan for the new seat of
learning would have taken this nobler circular form at the
start. But, as already stated, it would have been first
necessary to choose a wider and more level site than the
one selected for the site of a college with an obscured
future.[16]

The first parcel of land, which covered an area of fortyseven
acres, was, at the time of the purchase, an impoverished,
disused field. The second parcel, amounting to
one hundred and fifty-three acres, and situated about fiveeighths
of a mile from the first, contained a large quantity
of valuable timber and stone for building,—the reason
in part for its acquisition, since it was not needed as
the site of any of the projected structures. It was also
expected to form the watershed for the reservoir which
was to supply the cisterns within the precincts.

The first parcel had been patented, in 1735, by Abraham
Lewis, as a segment of a tract embracing eight
hundred acres. In the course of the previous year, David
Lewis and Joel Terrell, his brother-in-law, had acquired
title to three thousand acres, which took in the whole
of Lewis Mountain, situated on the western flank of the
present University site. At an early date, George Nicholas,
son of the colonial treasurer, Robert Carter Nicholas,
had purchased a tract of two thousand acres, which
included, among other sections of these first patents, that
portion on which the University buildings now stand. In
1790, James Monroe bought the part to which the present
Monroe Hill belongs. Twenty-four years afterwards,
John M. Perry purchased of John Nicholas,—
then filling the office of county clerk,—the actual site of
the University, and after holding it only three years, disposed
of it to the Visitors of Central College. Perry
was always addressed with the title of Captain, and had

sat on the bench of the county magistrates. He was a
man whose business branched out in many directions,
which would seem to indicate that he possessed at least
the qualities of energy and industry,—he was the owner
of large areas of ground, the proprietor of mills, and a
professional contractor. It was this combination of interests,
perhaps, that made him more inclined than John
Kelly to accept the offer of the Visitors for his two parcels
of land, for he not only thereby sold a respectable
number of worn-out acres at a satisfactory price, but, in
doing so, created for himself the prospect of securing
profitable jobs in the course of the future building. His
residence at Montibello, in the immediate neighborhood,
enabled him to give his personal attention without inconvenience.
As we shall see, he, as well as his son-in-law,
George W. Spooner, had an important share in the construction
of the College and University alike.

There seems to have been at first a cloud on the title
to the site, for it was not until June 23, 1817, that a
valid conveyance of it could be made to Alexander Garrett
as the trustee. On that day, Garrett, by the written
order of Perry, paid to John Winn $1,066.81 of the
money due for the area sold. That both tracts had
passed into the possession of the College by September
16, 1817, is confirmed by Perry's acknowledgment of
a deferred payment by Garrett, the late proctor of the
College, for Nelson Barksdale was now the incumbent of
that office.