The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
EDUCATION / STATE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
On a private subscription of about fifty or sixty thousand dollars we
began the establishment of what we called the Central College, about a
mile from the village of Charlottesville and four miles from this
place, and have made some progress in the buildings. The legislature
at their last session took up the subject and passed an act
establishing an University, endowing it for the present with an
annuity of fifteen thousand dollars and directing commissioners to
meet to recommend a site, a plan of buildings, the professorships
necessary for teaching all the branches of science at this day deemed
useful, etc.
The commissioners by a vote of sixteen for the Central College, two
for a second place and three for a third adopted that for the site of
the University. They approved by an unanimous vote the plan of
building begun at that place, and agreed on such a distribution of the
sciences as it was thought might bring them all within the competence
of ten professors; and no doubt is entertained of a confirmation by
the legislature at their meeting in December. The plan of building is
not to erect one single magnificent building to contain everybody, and
everything, but to make of it an academical village, in which every
professor should have his separate house, containing his lecturing
room with two, three or four rooms for his own accommodation according
as he may have a family or no family, with kitchen, garden, etc.,
distinct dormitories for the students, not more than two in a room
and separate boardinghouses for dieting them by private housekeepers.
We concluded to employ no professor who is not of the first order of
the science he professes, that when we can find such in our own
country we shall prefer them and when we cannot we will procure them
wherever else to be found.
to Nathaniel Bowditch, 26 October 1818
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