University of Virginia Library

Cornerstone Ceremonies

The laying of the cornerstone took place amidst a flurry of preparation that culminated with
the walls of the building rising to the "surface of the ground" by Sunday 5 October, the day
before the periodical meeting of the visitors as well as that of the county and district courts
and the scheduled date for the ceremonial laying of the pavilion's cornerstone.[74]

Jefferson's overseer Edmund Bacon described the scenes of those early days in an interview
with Reverand Hamilton W. Pierson some thirty-five years later. After personally recruiting
"ten able-bodied hands to commence the work," Bacon said that he accompanied Jefferson
and James Dinsmore from Monticello to the site of the Central College to begin laying the
foundation of Pavilion VII. "As we passed through Charlottesville," Bacon recalled, "I went
to old Davy Isaacs' store and got a ball of twine, and Dinsmore found some shingles and
made some pegs, and we all went on to the old field together. Mr. Jefferson looked over the
ground for some time and then struck down a peg. He stuck the very first peg in that
building, and then directed me where to carry the line, and I stuck the second. He carried
one end of the line, and I the other, in laying off the foundation of the University. He had a
little rule in his pocket that he always carried with him, and with this he measured off the
ground and laid off the entire foundation, and then set the men at work. I have that rule
now." Bacon's assertion that Jefferson laid off the foundation with (in Pierson's words) a
"small twelve-inch rule, so made as to be but three inches long when folded up" is absurd.
Bacon claimed to have recovered the rule from the Rivianna River during low water some
time after it fell out of Jefferson's pocket while the two men were "crawling through some
bushes and vines" along the bank of the canal.[75]

"After the foundation was nearly completed," Bacon continued, "they had a great time
laying the cornerstone. The old field was covered with carriages and people. There was an
immense crowd there. Mr. Monroe laid the cornerstone. He was President at that time. He
held the instruments and pronounced it square. He only made a few remarks, and Chapman
Johnson and several others made speeches. Mr. Jefferson—poor old man!—I can see his
white head just as he stood there and looked on."[76] Jefferson, only briefly mentioning the
ceremony in passing in his correspondence, was more concerned in fact with guaranteeing
the quick arrival of Lynchburg bricklayer David Knight so that he could commence laying
the brick walls of the pavilion while the Virginia weather was still relatively hospitable.[77]