University of Virginia Library

1. JOHN VAUGHAN KEAN (1803–1876)
Librarian 1825

The first Librarian, John Vaughan Kean, had the shortest
term, one year. It will be recalled that during 1825 the
collection of books was small, it was temporarily located in
a pavilion on West Lawn, and it was open for students only
one hour a week. The salary was $150 for the session. Yet
there were a number of applications for the position. The
one received from Dr. Andrew Kean in behalf of his son
found favor, probably because of Jefferson's high regard for
the father. Doctor Kean's home was in Goochland County,
but his reputation had extended throughout central Virginia.
It was said that, when the dates for his visits to distant
cases became known, patients would be brought to the roadside
to await his passing. At any rate, Jefferson and others
had urged this “beloved old Doctor” to take up his residence
in Charlottesville; and there is reliable testimony that
Andrew Kean was offered the chair of Medicine at the new
University. But he seems to have felt himself to be better
qualified for general practice than for teaching.

It was the son who was to be the teacher. John Vaughan
Kean had been born in 1803, and, according to his father's
letter of application to Rector Jefferson, possessed “a good
English education, a tolerable acquaintance with the Latin
and some slight knowledge of the Greek languages.” These
had been acquired before he enrolled as a student in the
University of Virginia. At the University his courses for
that first session were in the “Schools” of Chemistry, Mathematics,
Modern Languages, and Natural Philosophy. These
courses and the enforcement of the library regulations

under the supervision of Rector Jefferson and the Faculty
doubtless gave young Kean a busy year. Meantime his
father, after a short stay in Charlottesville, had decided to
return to his home and practice in Goochland County; and
at the end of the session the son resigned from the University
and from the library post and started a school at Olney
in Caroline County, Virginia. He was thus one of the first
of a distinguished company of secondary school administrators
and teachers who had the prestige of training at the
University of Virginia. At Only he married, raised a family
of considerable size, became “Schoolmaster Napoleon Kean
with the little head of all knowledge,” and lived until 1876.
One of his pupils later described his manner as suaviter in
modo, fortiter in re. As a phrase, this pleasantly demonstrated
the classical training received at the Olney School.
As a description, it may well be that there is here a trace of
the effect on the impressionable student-librarian of a year's
association with Thomas Jefferson.

That librarianship was brief, but Kean's later links
with the University and its Library through his family have
been close. A son of his, Robert Garlick Hill Kean, was a
student at the University, became a leading lawyer of
Lynchburg, Virginia, a member of the Board of Visitors
of the University from 1872 to 1875 and again from 1890
to 1894, and the Rector of the Board from 1872 to 1875.
This son married Jane Nicholas Randolph of Edgehill and
thus became allied with the Randolph and Jefferson families.
Their son, Jefferson Randolph Kean, was a graduate
of the University's Department of Medicine, had a distinguished
career in the Surgeon General's Department of
the United States Army, and was instrumental in support of
Walter Reed's achievements in the control of yellow fever.
Toward the close of his life, General Kean joined with his
son, Robert Hill Kean of Richmond, a doctor of philosophy
of the University of Virginia, in making available at the

University Library papers and books of rare associative
interest, since they had belonged to direct descendants of
both the Founder of the University and of the University's
first Librarian.