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.[14] 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 fast 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 he 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 twenty-five 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.[15] 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.