This series about the first half century of Washington and Lee University’s history was written by Larry Spurgeon. Part 1 covers the first two decades and two grammar schools that are considered precursors to W&L. This is a fuller version of the story that appeared in the June 10 paper.
W & L is a top-tier liberal arts university with a prestigious law school and an endowment of more than two billion dollars. Like most colleges, it has a humble creation story. The university’s website boasts that it was “Founded in 1749 as Augusta Academy,” by Robert Alexander, near Greenville, making it the “ninth-oldest college in the United States.”
This claim did not emerge until after the Civil War, as noted by Dr. Ollinger Crenshaw, W & L alum and professor, the leading authority on W & L’s history. A 1,200 page typescript made in conjunction with his 1969 book, General Lee’s College: The Rise of Washington and Lee University, has an appendix called The Problem of the Origins. Crenshaw observed that from 1820 to the end of the Civil War, the college “officially placed its origin” from 1774 to 1776, but from the 1860s forward it claimed 1749. In an endnote to Chapter 1 Crenshaw wrote that
The whole picture of the schools from about 1749 to the 1770s is unsatisfactory; the links are not strong or clear…. The present writer has carefully investigated such educational directories, journals devoted to education, almanacs, etc., of the first half of the nineteenth century as could be located in the Library of Congress and elsewhere for statistical data regarding the origins of Washington College. While these are not plentiful, in no case was the founding date of 1749 printed. It is evident even from cursory investigation that the institution had adhered to one version of its history (prior to 1865), and to another in the post-bellum era.
In the end, Crenshaw declined to offer his own opinion. The swerve about the founding date has been the subject of controversy, with some suspecting nefarious motives. The more likely explanation is a mixture of post-war nostalgia, and the discovery of a mysterious “note” in the school’s records.
The traditional narrative of W & L’s evolution involves at least four academic institutions. It is a tale with twists and turns, and a colorful cast of characters, some famous and others long forgotten.
Robert Alexander’s School
Robert Alexander was born in Ireland about 1710. According to some accounts, he received a Masters of Arts degree from Trinity College in Dublin. Crenshaw corresponded with Trinity but was unable to confirm the claim. The few facts about Robert’s early life come from an 1845 letter by his great-nephew, Dr. Archibald Alexander, the founder of Princeton Seminary. The recipient was Lyman Draper, librarian and Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Dr. Alexander traced the family to Scotland, and then to County Donegal, Ireland, where Robert Alexander was born.
In 1737, Robert and two brothers, Archibald and William, emigrated to Pennsylvania. Archibald and Robert relocated to Augusta County, Virginia in 1746. Robert first appeared in Augusta County records that same year, serving on a grand jury. A year later Governor Gooch issued a commission to elect twelve “of the most able men of the Parish to be sworn a Vestry,” and Robert was chosen. The vestry was modeled on the governance structure for the Church of England, equivalent to the board of supervisors today.
The two brothers received land grants in Augusta County in 1747. Archibald obtained a Borden grant near the junction of Irish Creek and the South River. His son William later owned a farm west of Lexington, the site of W & L’s campus. William’s house was the home of college presidents until Robert E. Lee had a new one built on the same site. The former house was moved to Randolph Street where it can be seen today. William also built one of the oldest houses still standing in Lexington – the Alexander-Withrow building at Nelson and Main. His son Andrew was a long-time trustee of the college, and another son was Dr. Archibald Alexander.
Robert purchased a 314-acre farm in the Beverley manor. According to an 1890 account by Judge James T. Patton, the farm had a large brick house on the west side of the railroad just north of the Spottswood depot. The farm is on Almo Chapel Road, about a mile and a half north of Spottswood, just west of, and visible from, Interstate 81. The present house was built about 1827 by Robert’s son James. The National Historic Registry nomination form states the land was owned by Robert Alexander who had a classical school there.
Dr. Alexander wrote that his great-uncle operated a “classical and mathematical school,” that was “the first in that part of the valley.” The only contemporaneous source about Robert’s role as teacher is an Augusta County court record in May 1751, mentioning a payment to him “for schooling, James and Robert McNutt,” orphans of James McNutt. The same entry mentions a payment to James Dobbins for schooling another McNutt orphan.
Robert Alexander resigned as vestryman in 1760 because a “lingering sickness hath long disabled me.” He may have retired from teaching at about that time, though he was named a church warden for Augusta County later that year. A chronicler of early Virginia and North Carolina, Henry Foote, wrote a sketch in 1850 about Reverend Samuel Doak, the founder of two colleges in Tennessee, Washington and Tusculum. Foote stated that at sixteen Doak “commenced a course of classical study with Mr. Robert Alexander, who resided about two miles from his father’s house.” Doak was born in 1749, so if he studied under Robert Alexander, it was no sooner than 1765.
Robert Alexander died in 1783 leaving a will that mentioned his wife Esther (maiden name Beard), daughters Sarah and Eleanor; sons James, Hugh, Peter, William, Thomas, and Robert. Hugh received the family dwelling and James the southeast part of the farm. The estate inventory listed four enslaved people, an older woman named Saray (Sarah), Phyllis, Will, and a child, Jenny.
Rev. John Brown’s School
By tradition, Robert Alexander’s school was taken over by Rev. John Brown. The Rockbridge County News reported in 1890 that Brown became the “guardian of the academy” in 1762. No primary sources document how long Robert Alexander operated his school, or whether there was a direct connection to Brown’s school. All that is certain is that by the 1770s Brown ran a school at Mount Pleasant, near the 250-acre farm he purchased in 1755.
If Robert Alexander sought someone to take his students, Rev. John Brown was a logical choice. He was the first minister assigned to a church in what is now Rockbridge County. The village of Brownsburg is named for him, and he owned two of the first lots. Born in County Londonderry, Ireland, about 1728, Brown came to America as a young man. In 1749, he graduated from the College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton, where most Presbyterian ministers were educated. Brown was then sent by New Castle Presbytery as a missionary to Virginia.
Presbyterian Church governance was structured into geographical tiers. Each church was part of a presbytery, with several presbyteries making up a synod. All synods in the United States were part of the general assembly. A schism developed in the early 18th-century. Old Siders were more conservative, suspicious of emotional behavior in church, and affiliated with the Synod of Philadelphia. New Siders, sometimes referred to as New Lights, were inspired by the charismatic evangelical minister George Whitefield, and promoted a more dynamic and emotional worship service. The Synod of New York was associated with New Siders.
The first Presbyterian congregation in the area was organized in the early 1740s, called the South Meeting House. A log church building was erected a mile west of Spottswood. Soon afterwards the congregation split into two groups. Old Providence remained at the original site and New Providence moved six miles west. A few years later a Presbyterian church was formed at Timber Grove on the Great Valley Road, and in 1746, it was moved two miles south to Timber Ridge.
Rev. Brown, a New Sider, was appointed the pastor of both New Providence and Timber Ridge in 1753. The following year the trustees of New Providence purchased three acres across from its current site on Highway 252 north of Brownsburg. Joseph Kennedy sold the land, and the deed states it was for a Presbyterian meeting house and burial place, and the congregation had begun to prepare for the building of the church.
At a meeting of the New York Synod in 1755 a new presbytery was established for the colony of Virginia, named Hanover Presbytery, after the home county of Reverend Samuel Davies. Six ministers were appointed for the new presbytery, including Davies and Brown.
John Brown married Margaret Preston, whose father was John Preston of Tinkling Springs. Dr. Alexander informed Draper that Margaret and her sisters “were remarkable for understanding and wit.” John and Margaret Brown were the progenitors of an impressive family. All five sons went to Princeton and two became United States Senators, John Brown, Jr. from Kentucky, and James Brown from Louisiana. A grandson, Benjamin Gratz Brown, was governor and senator from Missouri, and the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1872.
Mary Brown, the daughter of John and Margaret Brown, married Dr. Alexander Humphreys, who led a medical school in Staunton - one of his students was future president William Henry Harrison. In 1826, their daughter, Elizabeth “Betsy” Humphreys, married Robert Todd, a widower in Lexington, Kentucky, becoming stepmother to his children, including eight year old Mary. In 1839, Mary Todd, then 20, went to live with her sister’s family in Springfield, Illinois, perhaps because, it is sometimes claimed, she did not get along with her stepmother. She was courted by two ambitious young lawyers, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. Fortuitously choosing the latter, she later became first lady of the United States.
Some traditions claim that Brown first had a school at Old Providence, an odd choice for him, because it is six miles from New Providence and thirteen miles from Timber Ridge. More to the point, Old Providence was an Old Sider congregation, while Brown was a New Sider – a very big deal at the time.
Judge James T. Patton, who grew up near Mount Pleasant, described the location of Brown’s home and school. The house was on the north side of the railroad west of Fairfield, “just opposite the high trestle work, and a short distance from the road.” The farm site is just west of Fairfield and Interstate 81, near Viewpoint Heights, south of Sterrett Road.
The school was “on the highest point of the Ridge, about a mile west of Fairfield, and equally distant from his house, which was situated at a like distance from Fairfield, on the same Ridge – the road to the Academy going out from the north end of town, and that leading to his dwelling from the south end.” The location was “accurately known to me, it being within less than a quarter of a mile of the residence of my grandfather Patton.” It was on the farm of Moses Wilson, an early settler. The Valley Railroad was within a few hundred yards of the school, “and the old foundation, or chimney stones, now lie scattered around,” on a “high eminence” at the north end of a ridge near a spring. The school was on the ridge west of Ridge Road, about halfway between Sterrett Road and McClure Road, above Marlbrook Creek.
Crenshaw quoted several letters written by Brown to his brother-in-law, Col. William Preston. The original letters are in the Lyman Draper Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and I reviewed them there in 2024. The earliest documented reference to Brown’s school is found in a letter to Col. Preston dated January 13, 1773: “I am very busily employed in my old-age more than I have been since I was a boy; overseeing the School and sometimes hearing classes.” He managed the school and occasionally filled in as teacher. In 1774, Brown informed Preston that “Our school flourishes,” with 23 students attending, including his son William and Jimmy Breckinridge. Brown wanted to educate his children so they would be “useful members of society.”
It has long been believed that Rev. Brown’s school was transferred to the Hanover Presbytery, where it became the first Presbyterian school west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the subject of Part 2.
