Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University of Virginia, 1817-1828

In March 1817 Jefferson sent a circular letter to the other visitors of the Central College
—James Madison, James Monroe, John Hartwell Cocke, Joseph Carrington Cabell, and
David Watson—requesting their "attendance as a visitor of our proposed college on Tuesday
the 8th. of April, being the day after our election. you will of course, I am in hopes come
here the day or evening before, that we may have some previous consultation on the subject.
. . . Colo. Monroe I suppose will not be in the neighborhood."[31] Madison, detained in
Washington until 6 April, could not attend either, and, in fact, only two members joined
Jefferson at the April meeting. The law specified for a new date to be set whenever the
board failed to make a quorum, so the 5th of May was next chosen.[32] The reason for the
sudden interest in holding a meeting, aside from the fact that the law establishing the college
mandated at least two meetings a year,[33] was the fact that an attractive tract of land was
being offered for sale by John M. Perry, a house carpenter whom Jefferson employed to do
rough carpenter work when he was remodelling Monticello after his retirement from the
presidency.[34] The tract, located about one mile west of the village of Charlottesville, was
Jefferson's second choice for a building site but nevertheless well-suited to meet his
architectural requirements. The visitors ratified a provisional agreement to purchase the land
at the May meeting after "having themselves proceeded to the said grounds, examined them,
& considered the terms of the Said provisional purchase." The visitors also voted to erect a
pavilion according to the plan previously accepted by the trustees of the Albemarle
Academy and ordered the institution's new proctor, Alexander "Sandy" Garrett,

so soon as the funds are at his command to agree with proper workmen for the
building of one, of stone or brick below ground, and of brick above, of
substantial work, of regular architecture, well executed, and to be completed, if
possible, during the ensuing summer and winter; that the lots for the Said
pavilions be delineated on the ground of the breadth of [blank] feet with two
parallel sides of indefinite length, and that the pavilion first to be erected be
placed on one of the lines so delineated, with its floor in such degree of
elevation from the ground as may correspond with the regular inclined plain to
which it may admit of being reduced hereafter.

And it is further resolved that so far as the funds may admit, the Proctor be requested to
proceed to the erection of dormitories for the Students, adjacent to the said pavilion, not
exceeding ten on each side, of brick, and of regular architecture according to the same plan
proposed.[35]

[31]

31. TJ to the Board of Visitors of the Central College, 10 March, 1817, in ViU:TJ.
Ironically, all but Madison, who attended the College of New Jersey (Princeton University),
were alumni of the College of William and Mary (see A Provisional List of Alumni,
Grammar School Students, Members of the Faculty, and Members of the Board of Visitors of
the College of William and Mary in Virginia, from 1693 to 1888, 9, 10, 13, 23, 39).

[32]

32. See John Hartwell Cocke to TJ, 26 March, in CSmH:TJ, Madison to TJ, 10 April, in
ViU:TJ, and TJ to Monroe, 13 April 1817, in DLC:TJ.

[33]

33. The act establishing the college required the board of visitors to meet on the days of the
commencement of the spring and fall terms of the Albemarle circuit court, and made
provision for occasional meetings as may be called from time to time by any three members,
giving effectual and timely notice to the others.

[34]

34. John M. Perry, who was born in the late 1770s and who died in Missouri in
the late 1830s, was a major contractor for both carpentry and brickmasonry work
at the university. The owner of considerable property, including thirty-seven
slaves by 1820, Perry received over $30,000 for his work at the university, more
than any other contractor. See Lay, "Charlottesville's Architectural Legacy,"
Magazine of Albemarle County History, 46:40-43, 45, 48.

[35]

35. Minutes of the Board of Visitors of the Central College, 5 May 1817, PPAmP: UVA
Minutes; see also Cabell, Early History of the University of Virginia, 393-96, and
Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, 338. Only three members of the Board of Visitors,
Madison, Monroe, and Cocke, joined TJ at the May meeting. At the meeting Garrett was
appointed treasurer for the college, a post he held after relinquishing the proctorship in July
1817. Valentine W. Southall was appointed the board's secretary, and Jefferson and Cocke
were appointed "a committee on the part of the Visitors with authority jointly or severally to
advise and sanction all plans and the application of monies for executing them which may
be within the purview and functions of the Proctor for the time being." The symbolic
importance of the visitors' first meeting was not lost on Jefferson's contemporaries, as
evidenced by a news release printed in the Richmond Enquirer on 13 May: "On the 5th of
this month, three men were seen together at Charlottesville (county of Albemarle), each of
whom alone is calculated to attract the eager gaze of their Fellow Citizens‐We mean,
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. . . . They have been friends for
years, and are as sincere friends at this moment. . . . The appearance of three such men
together at a village where the citizens of the county had met to attend their court, is an
event, which for its singularity, deserves the notice of a passing paragraph" (quoted in
Malone's discussion of the visitors' meeting in Jefferson and His Times: The Sage of
Monticello, 254-57, and reprinted in the Washington, D.C., Daily National Intelligencer, 23
May 1817).

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