College of William and Mary - Colonial Echo Yearbook (Williamsburg, VA)

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The President alone remained at his post, and at the beginning of each collegiate year caused the College bell to be rung as a reminder to the people that although forgotten, and neglected, William and Mary could not die. During the suspension of seven years, the debts was reduced to $7,000, and this was the state of affairs when, in 1SS8, the proposition by which the institution was revived, was first presented to the State Legislature. The Constitution of the State made it mandatory upon the Legislature to establish normal schools. It was shown that the use of the College buildings would save the State a large outlay of money. Moved by this consideration and by the generous motive of making some reparation for revolutionary losses and of rescuing from destruction an object of such historic interest and connections, the Legislature appropriated the sum of $10,000 annually to the College on condition that said College shall establish in connection with the collegiate course, a system of normal instruction and training for the purpose of educating white male teachers for the public schools of the State. It was enacted that hereafter the affairs of the College should be administered by a board consisting of ten of the old Board of Visitors, and ten members appointed by the Governor, and every county and city of the .State was declared entitled to have one or more of its young men educated free at the College. These terms were duly accepted by the College, and at the first meeting of the joint board, held May 10th, 1888, six different departments were determined upon, and Professors Hall, Stubbs, Wharton, and Garrett were elected to hold office from the first of Octobe ensuing. At a subsequent meeting held in August, 1888, Lyon G. Tyler was elected President, to hold office from the first of Sep- tember ensuing, and the organization was completed at the same meeting by the election of Hugh S. Bird, Professor of Pedagogy. Since 1888 the College has been in full operation, and during this time has had an average attendance greater than at any period in its history. In 1890 the annual appropriation was increased to $15,000, and in 1893 Congress voted $64,000 as a reimbursement for the buildings destroyed during the Civil War, thus happily in a great measure removing the stigma which had attached so long to the good fame of the government. Of the part which William and Mary will play in the future, under the new regime, it is too early yet to peak. With a faculty of ten, with an average attendance of nearly two hundred students, and with a course of study second to none in the State, it bids fair to rival its former history. In closing this account, it might be well to mention some of the most promi- nent alumni of William and Mary. Rightly has she been called the mother of statesmen. In the list of students preserved since 17 10, will be found an impo- sing array of names holding the highest stand in the legislature, at the bar, and in the pulpit, not only in Virginia and the South, but throughout the entire country. The valor of her sons has added to the renown of Virginia from the

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seventy Bve students who came to drink at this spring of philosophy, literature, ami science, under the guidance of such men as Judge Beverley Tucker, the Right Rev. John Johns, Thomas R. Dew, and their associates and successors. The largest number attending at any one time was in 1840, under President Thomas R. D ew, when the matriculation book showed an attendance of one hundred and forty. ( hi the night of February 8th, 1859, at a time when the Alumni were pre- paring to celebrate the one hundred and sixty-sixth anniversary at the coming commencement, fire broke out in the main building of the College. All attempts to stay the flames were futile, and nothing was saved except the records and the College stamp. But the authorities did not despair ; and within one year from the date of the burning, the College had been completely rebuilt, and was again in full operation with ample means to sustain the Faculty. When the war between the States broke out, ninety per cent, of her stu- dents joined the Confederate army, and in May, 1861, the existence of hostilities at her very threshold rendered it necessary to suspend exercises. In September, 1 sfij, some drunken Federal soldiers fired and once more destroyed the College building, together with the library, apparatus, and other property belonging to the College. Afterwards other houses and property were destroyed by Union soldiers. To many at that time it must have seemed that the institution had fallen never to rise again. Its buildings were in ruins, and the country around, after the departure of the Federal army, seemed utterly desolate. But those walls in which the calm voice of philosophy had echoed for so many years were not des- tined to stand as a mouldering monument of the wickedness of war. Loyal friends and alumni rallied around the College ; 1869 saw the buildings entirely restored, and the College in the enjoyment of a new Faculty, organized with the departments of Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Modern Languages, Natural Science, Philosophy, and Belles-Lettres. It is a peculiar fact in the history of institutions of learning that compara- tively few of them are self-sustaining. William and Mary was not an exception to the general rule. Old endowments had been lost, new ones proved inadequate, and the annual expenses exceeded the annual income. The venerable President, Benjamin S. Ewell, thrice appeared before Congress, asking for reimburse- ment for buildings destroyed by the wanton acts of Federal troops. This bill was ably supported by Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, and others, but with no avail ; and an institution which was once the beacon of learning and political intelligence, not alone for Virginia, but for the whole South and for the country at large, was suffered to decline by a nation which owed it an actual though paltry debt of $70,000. Noble efforts were made to sustain the College, but at last all the professors were dismissed because their salaries could not be paid ; 1 88 1 found it without a single student, and exercises were suspended until 1888. 16

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defeat ol Braddock to the surrender at Appomattox. Situated in a political ceii. ter, William and Mary was a seminary of history and politics, and with a Faculty which lias been from time to time adorned with the names ol such men as James Blair, Samuel Henley, Hugh Jones, Rev. Gronow Owen, William Small, William Stitb, Thomas R. Hew, Madison, Wythe, Rogers, Holmes, Wilmer, and others ol equal merit, it was nothing but natural that it should have sent forth an ana ol unrivaled lawyers, statesmen, and divines. Among those whom it furnished to the American Revolution were Benjamin Harrison, Carter Braxton, Thomas Nelson, and George Wythe, signers 01 the Declaration; Peyton Randolph, President of the first American Congress; Edmund Randolph, draftsman of the Constitution of the United States; John Marshall, Chief Justice ; Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe, Presidents ol the United States, not to mention others of almost equal merit. During the first half of the present century it sent forth John Tyler, President ot the United States ; Littleton W. Tazewell, William B. Giles, John Randolph, Spencer Roane, Bushrod Washington, James Breckinridge, Archibald Stewart, William Brockenbrough, James P. Preston, Robert B. Taylor, George M. Bibb, William T. Barry, Philip P. Barbour, Benjamin Watkins Leigh, William H. Cabell, Briscoe G. Baldwin, H. St. George Tucker, John T. Dornax, John Kelson, William S. Archer, John J. Crittenden, Winfield Scott, William C. Rives, and others of national and state service. Notwithstanding the fact that she has suffered two fires since 1S57, and was forced to discontinue lectures during twelve years of the time, William and Mary in the interval since has kept pace with her former history, and sent forth scores of men who have occupied and are now occupying the highest places in their respective professions. The catalogues show the names of over five hundred others who have reached a high degree of eminence. To enumerate these is beyond the scope of this sketch, and so we shall simply quote the summary made in the present catalogue: Her alumni gave to the Federal bar two eminent Attorney-Generals of the United States ; to the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, over sixty members ; to the Senate of the United States, twenty-nine Senators ; to Virginia and other States, twenty-five Governors ; to the country one historian, and numberless eminent law and other writers ; to the State and the United States, thirty-seven judges ; to the Revolution, twenty-seven of her sons ; to the army of the United States, a Uieuteuant-General (Winfield Scott), and a score of principal and subordinate officers ; to the United States navy, a list of paladins of the sea headed by Warreuton and Thomas Ap. Catesby Jones ; to the Colleges and Universities, numerous professors ; to the Union three Presidents (Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler) ; to the Federal judiciary, its most eminent Chief-Justice (John Marshall) ; to the Federal executive, nine cabinet officers, and to the con- vention which framed the Constitution of the United States, its chief author and draftsman, Edmund Randolph. 18