University of Virginia Library

GESSNER HARRISON

Harrison Hall is named in honor of Gessner
Harrison, a student in the first session
of the University of Virginia and a member
of its Faculty from his graduation in 1828
to 1859. His career afforded a demonstration
of the achievement of one at least of
the purposes for which the University was
founded. Himself a product of the college
training offered by the new institution, in
his thirty-one years as Professor he had a
recognized part in so preparing leaders in
secondary education that their pupils matriculated
for college at a definitely mounting
stage of attainment. It was a prime example
of the potent effect of higher education
on the whole educational system.

Professor Harrison's contribution was
characterized by patient industry, an open
mind, robust common sense, and sound
judgment. He was not brilliant, but he was
conspicuously useful. He was born in Harrisonburg,
Virginia, 26 June 1807. His
father was a physician of wide practice, and

the son was inclined to make medicine his
career. But when, in 1828, he became one
of the first three graduates in the School
of Medicine, Gessner Harrison was also one
of the first three graduates of the School of
Ancient Languages; and Professor Long,
who was at that point returning to England,
recommended that the position of
Professor of Ancient Languages be filled
by the twenty-one year old Harrison. The
surprised Board of Visitors offered a probationary
appointment of one year. The
equally surprised Harrison accepted it.
The regular appointment followed in due
course.

The years that ensued were strenuous.
There were difficult problems of discipline
for a professor of approximately the same
age as his students, and there was the incessant
pressure of preparing for class instruction.
But intelligence and initiative guided
labor. Harrison was probably the first in
America to adopt the new German science
of comparative grammar, and the University
gained a solid reputation for its courses

in the Classics. In 1856, in order to relieve
the congestion in those courses, the Board
of Visitors divided the School of Ancient
Languages into Schools of Latin and of
Greek and Hebrew. Gessner Harrison was
given his choice and selected Latin, Basil
Lanneau Gildersleeve being appointed to
the other School. In administration also
Professor Harrison won general confidence.
Five times he was chosen Chairman of the
Faculty, serving altogether twelve years in
that exacting office.

His busy life afforded little opportunity
for writing, but he did produce treatises on
Latin Grammar, on Greek Prepositions,
and on Ancient Geography, and he contributed
the article on the University of Virginia
to Duyckinck's Cyclopedia of American
Literature.

There was also an active family life. In
1830 he married a daughter of Professor
George Tucker, and there were six sons
and three daughters. One daughter became
the wife of Professor Francis Henry Smith
and another of a prominent Baptist clergyman,

the Rev. John Albert Broadus. It was
in part to seek financial support for the
education of his children that Professor
Harrison resigned from the Faculty in 1859
in order to establish a boarding school for
boys. But the promising opportunities of
the prosperous 1850's in Virginia turned
to ashes with the coming of armed conflict;
and on 7 April 1862 Gessner Harrison himself
became a victim of the war, for in
nursing a son who had contracted camp
fever, he was fatally infected by the same
disease.

There is a revealing incident of a meeting
between Rector Jefferson and students
Gessner Harrison and his elder brother,
Edward, who had matriculated with him.
During the first session, groups of students
were in rotation invited to a Sunday meal
at Monticello—a Sunday meal in order
that college routines might not be interrupted.
When the invitation came to the
Harrison brothers, a frank letter of regrets
was sent, explaining that the promise had
been made to the father not to indulge in

social events on the Sabbath Day. This act
of filial piety moved Jefferson to warm appreciation,
and he cordially responded with
a special arrangement for a weekday occasion.
It proved a felicitious and memorable
experience for this youth, who was so admirably
to carry forward the aims of the
Founder by his own resolutely individual
and self-sacrificing efforts.