University of Virginia Library

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.[4] 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 occupied

this region were descended from settlers who had
taken possession of it early in the seventeenth century,
while Williamsburg itself was the oldest town of historic
importance in the State, the former seat of government
and of colonial fashion, and retaining, even in its decay,
the glow of the culture and refinement which had distinguished
it from the beginning.

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

country residences and farm-houses scattered about it
here and there, and open fields in fallow or in wheat,
and pleasant groves of primaeval trees. There, in the
shadow of the Southwest Mountains at sunrise and of the
Ragged Mountains at sunset, stood the little hamlet of
Charlottesville; and not far off flowed the Rivanna, showing
a narrow turbid glimpse of its surface as it turned to
pass onward to the James.

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 vast 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

ground lying on the eastern slopes of the Southwest
Mountains. Slowly, yard by yard, as it were, in the
course of many years, the settlements had been creeping
up the headwaters of the Pamunkey towards the northwest,
and the main stream of the James towards the west.
The third patent, obtained a few years later, embraced
land along the banks of the latter river. It was not until
1730 apparently that any part of the soil adjacent to the
Rivanna was appropriated. Only five patents were sued
out in 1730, and only three in the following year. It
was not until 1732 that the western base of the Southwest
Mountains was arrived at: the land that afterwards
formed the site of the little town of Milton,—which
became the port of entry for much of the material used
in the original construction of the University,—was
taken up during this year. This was the nearest point to
the present town of Charlottesville so far reached by the
settler. Among the four patents granted in 1733, one
was obtained that spread from the mouth of Moore's
Creek to a boundary line running beyond the modern
estate of Pen Park, the birthplace of Francis Walker Gilmer,
Jefferson's staunch coadjutor in the next century.
By 1734, the plateau of Pantops and Lego, overlooking
the valley of the Rivanna and visible from the present
Observatory Mountain, had been occupied by patentees;
and before the close of the year, Lewis Mountain, and
the land situated immediately towards the west, had been
acquired by Joseph Terrell and David Lewis.

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

placing on the lands a few tenants or slaves, who were
not expected to snatch more than their own support out
of the new ground. Enterprising and independent yeomen
began to come in, in 1734, and now the real social
and economic development of the region took a start in
earnest. The swollen patent, however, continued to be
sued out by prominent gentlemen in Eastern Virginia,
only a very small proportion of whose number had any
intention of removing their homes to these back lands:
in 1735, for instance, the father of Patrick Henry was
a patentee; and in the same year, William Randolph
acquired the tract which included the modern estates of
Shadwell and Edgehill; Peter Jefferson, father of
Thomas, a tract of one thousand acres on the southern
bank of the Rivanna; and Abraham Lewis, the tract which
takes in the present site of the University.

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 be extended gradually to
those intervening spaces which remained vacant because

holding out so much smaller inducements for preoccupation.
As late as 1796, a patent was granted for twentyfive
thousand acres of land in Albemarle that was still
in the possession of the State.

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

and mountains, within the same area of country. One
of the modern roads that crosses the Ridge followed,
when first laid down, a trail which herds of bison had
been tramping over during uncounted centuries. As late
as 1896, there were domiciled in Albemarle persons who
had conversed with a man whose father had watched a
long string of these animals wading the Roanoke River
at a ford situated less than two hundred miles from the
site of the University.[5] The Pigeon Tops of the present
day point to the haunts where the wild pigeons
gathered in flocks of hundreds of thousands, either to
roost or to feed on the acorns that had dropped to the
ground in the autumnal woods on the mountain sides.

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

counted in the first census, had swelled to 12,585; by
1810, to 18,268; and by 1820, when the University was
building, to 32,618.