Bibliographic Essay
This essay is not intended to provide a full bibliography of the sources and secondary studies consulted by the authors. Rather, it seeks to provide interested readers with an indication of the major sources and secondary works that focus more directly on the College and are cited with some frequency. A host of other materials, which were used less often but nonetheless contained some important details, are identified in the relevant endnotes.
Obviously, the College archives in the special collections division of the Earl Gregg Swem Library (WMA and WMM) constitute the most valuable source, although their relative completeness and organization vary according to time period in the history of William and Mary. For the earliest period, they are especially scattered. A significant portion of what does remain, apart from the bursar’s books, has been reprinted throughout the volumes in the first and second series of the William and Mary Quarterly. Much of this material and also other sources may be identified by consulting Earl Gregg Swem, comp., Virginia Historical Index, 2 vols. (Roanoke: Stone Printing and Manufacturing Co., 1934, 1936).
Two other especially valuable collections are the Dawson Papers, Library of Congress, and the Fulham Palace Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, London. The latter contain letters sent to the bishop of London by presidents of the College, commissaries of the bishop of London, and other clergymen. Many are reprinted in volume one of William Stevens Perry, ed., Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church, 5 vols. (Hartford: Printed for the Subscribers, 1870–78). The complete body of Virginia materials is also available on microfilm in the Virginia Colonial Records Project (copies available at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia State Library).
Mary R. M. Goodwin, comp., “Historical Notes: The College of William and Mary” (Research report, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1954), is also a valuable collection of materials relating to the early College. Scattered, but important, sources are also found in the various public records of both Great Britain and the Virginia colony and the papers of several of the colonial governors and are cited in the endnotes. The various editions of the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette also contain pertinent material, which may be located with the help of Lester J. Cappon and Stella Duff [Neiman], comps., Virginia Gazette Index, 2 vols. (Williamsburg: Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1950). The best edition of the Charter of 1693 is Frank B. Evans, ed., The Royal Charter of 1693 of the College of William and Mary in Virginia (Williamsburg: College of William and Mary, 1993).
The colonial period is generally better served by secondary studies than are later periods. Those that have proved particularly helpful include Jane Carson, James Innes and His Brothers of the F.H.C. (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg, 1965); Jurgen Herbst, From Crisis to Crisis: American College Government, 1636–1819 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982); John M. Jennings, The Library of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, 1693–1793 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968); James D. Kornwolf, “So Good a Design”: The Colonial Campus of the College of William and Mary (Williamsburg: Muscarelle Museum of the College of William and Mary, 1989); J. E. Morpurgo, Their Majesties’ Royall Colledge: William and Mary in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Williamsburg: Endowment Association of the College of William and Mary, 1976); Parke Rouse, Jr., James Blair of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971); and Robert Polk Thomson, “The Reform of the College of William and Mary, 1763–1780,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 115 (1971): 187–213.
The period 1782-1861 confronts the researcher with some serious difficulties. Institutional records are incomplete or nonexistent. Except for a few scattered fragments, the minutes of meetings of the Board of Visitors before 1860 are lost or destroyed. The same is true of the minutes of faculty meetings before 1825, and those for succeeding years are often terse and formulaic. Except for a few scraps, the bursar’s records for the years 1782–1804 do not exist, and those from the decade of the 1850s are by no means easy to decipher. The first College Catalogue appeared in 1817, but there is nothing approaching a consecutive sequence until the 1830s. Fortunately, the laws, or statutes, enacted by the Board of Visitors were published sporadically, and most if not all of those not published can be found in the College archives, sometimes in unexpected places.
All in all, the gaps in the College’s official records require one to pursue the jigsaw puzzle method: combing collateral sources to find one piece here, another there, in an effort to create a reasonably coherent picture. The reader is referred to the endnotes for the various collections drawn upon at William and Mary, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, the University of Virginia, the Virginia Historical Society, the Virginia Theological Seminary, the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others.
As for printed primary sources, the first and second series of the William and Mary Quarterly and the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography have been especially useful. For secondary sources, the reader is referred to the many that are listed in the endnotes. Perhaps the point to emphasize is that incomplete as they are, the archival and manuscript holdings in the special collections department of Swem Library have provided a great preponderance of the facts relating to this period of the College’s history.
The presidential and personal papers of Benjamin S. Ewell in Swem Library (WMA and WMM) are essential to an understanding of the 1862–88 period, as are the Faculty Minutes (WMA) for those years. Also important are the diaries of Visitors Hugh Blair Grigsby at the Virginia Historical Society and Colonel William Lamb at Swem (WMM), and the papers of Bursar Tazewell Taylor (WMM) and Visitors Warner T. Jones (WMM) and General William B. Taliaferro (WMM).
Information on student life at the College during this period can be gleaned from Faculty/ Alumni files, personal papers at Swem, and College publications; the single most helpful source is the series of alumni interviews conducted by Associate Librarian Robert Hunt Land in the 1930s and available in the Land Papers (WMA). Newspapers, College publications, and numerous reports of the United States Congress shed light on the College’s long campaign to gain federal compensation for the destruction of the Main Building and other campus structures during the Civil War. Anne W. Chapman’s meticulous study, “Benjamin Stoddert Ewell: A Biography” (Ph.D. diss., William and Mary, 1984), is an invaluable secondary source for both the man and the College.
The special collections division of Swem Library houses the primary source material for the presidency of Lyon G. Tyler, 1888–1919. The College archives holds Tyler’s presidential papers essential but providing a one-sided record of only incoming correspondence. Tyler rarely kept copies (except drafts) of outgoing letters. Especially useful were the papers of Rector Robert Morton Hughes. Other vital archival materials were the College Papers, Faculty Minutes, Board of Visitors Executive Committee Minutes, and the Board of Visitors Minutes, which contain Tyler’s comprehensive reports on the College.
The manuscripts department holds a rich collection of personal papers, including those of General William B. Taliaferro, Colonel William Lamb, Henry Denison Cole (containing the School Board Minutes), William H. E. Morecock, the Tyler Family, and the Hall Family. The Bruton Parish Church Records provided other useful information. For property transactions, the City of Williamsburg and the James City County deed books, located in the Court House, were invaluable.
College publications such as the annual Catalogue, the Colonial Echo, and the Flat Hat were helpful. Other informative secondary works included Lyon G. Tyler, The Mattey Whaley Model and Practice School of William and Mary College (Richmond: Whittet and Shepperson, 1895), and The College of William and Mary in Virginia (Richmond: Whittet and Shepperson, 1907); Rawls Byrd, History of Public Schools in Williamsburg (Williamsburg: n.p., 1968); Howard W. Wiseman, The Seven Wise Men (New York: Jacques and Co., 1948); and a variety of articles appearing in the Alumni Gazette/William and Mary Magazine.
The Tyler era has provided fertile ground for William and Mary dissertations and theses, and the most important of these were Anne W. Chapman, “Benjamin Stoddert Ewell: A Biography” (Ph.D. diss., 1984); Bruce Emerson, “A History of the Relationships between the State of Virginia and Its Public Normal Schools: 1869–1930” (Ed.D. diss., 1973); Laura F. Parrish, “When Mary Entered with Her Brother William: Women Students at the College of William and Mary, 1918–45” (M.A. thesis, 1988); and Sara S. Rogers, “The Southern Lady versus the Old Dominion: The Battle for Higher Education for Virginia’s Women, 1910–1920” (Honors thesis, 1975).
Most of the essential sources for the 1919–45 period will also be found in the College archives. The three most important collections are the presidential papers of Julian A. C. Chandler, John Stewart Bryan, and John E. Pomfret. Also essential are the minutes of the faculty and the Board of Visitors. There are also many other smaller collections of papers in the archives that shed light on William and Mary developments during this period. The more important of these include the College’s Administration and Finance Papers, the AAUP Papers, the Librarian’s Correspondence, 1920–52, the Phi Beta Kappa Papers, the minutes of the Board of Directors of the Society of the Alumni, as well as the papers of several individual faculty members. These and several other collections, too numerous to list here, are cited in the endnotes.
Two other valuable sources in the College archives for the 1919–45 period are the Faculty/ Alumni files, for newspaper clippings and other details on many individuals, and the Oral History Interviews, which shed considerable light on many aspects of student and faculty life. The archives also have the essential College publications. These include such annuals as the College Catalogue, the Student Handbook (title varies); the Woman’s Student Government Handbook (title varies); the weekly student newspaper, the Flat Hat; the students’ yearbook, the Colonial Echo; and the Alumni Gazette.
Also valuable are the files of Alpha chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. These are kept in the vault of Phi Beta Kappa at the College. Archival sources on the 1919–45 period in other depositories are limited, although some relevant material will be found in the archives and records division of the Virginia State Library in Richmond (particularly in the executive papers of the various governors), in the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, and in the special collections department in the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia. Douglas Southall Freeman’s unpublished work, “John Stewart Bryan: A Biography” (1947), may be consulted in the Virginia Historical Society.
For the period 1945–85, there is an overwhelming abundance of primary source material in the College archives, including the presidential papers of John E. Pomfret, Alvin D. Chandler, Davis Y. Paschall, and Thomas A. Graves, Jr. Although the quantity was more than sufficient, the unprocessed condition of the papers made research more difficult. The office files of various deans, vice-presidents, the provost, and Rector Oscar Shewmake, and the papers of active participants such as Richard L. Morton, Charles P. McCurdy, Harold L. Fowler, Charles Duke, and Nelson Marshall were invaluable. Other information came from the Subject, Publications, and Faculty/Alumni files. The volumes of Board of Visitors Minutes and Faculty Minutes were the foundation of the chronology. The manuscripts department provided additional Morton papers, as well as those of Channing M. Hall, Lester J. Cappon, and William M. Tuck.
Other important material came from repositories such as the Huntington Library, the Virginia State Library, the State Council of Higher Education, the Naval Historical Center, the United States Navy Reference Branch of the National Personnel Records Center, and the Kellock Library of the Institute of Early American History and Culture. Especially useful were the transcripts of about forty-eight of the oral histories conducted by the College in the mid-1970s. The present author also interviewed dozens of participants, including William and Mary presidents Paschall and Graves and H. W. Cunningham, president of Christopher Newport College, administrators, faculty, students, and Board of Visitors members.
Aside from articles in the Alumni Gazette/William and Mary Magazine, there is no solid history of the modern College, although other College publications and a few William and Mary dissertations and theses were helpful. These are cited in the endnotes.
Many secondary works provided an important perspective for William and Mary’s place in higher education during its entire history. These included Philip G. Altbach and Robert O. Berdahl, eds., Higher Education in American Society (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981); John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American Colleges and Universities, 1636-1976, 3d ed. rev. (New York: Harper and Row, 1976); Richard Hofstadter and C. DeWitt Hardy, The Development and Scope of Higher Education in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952); Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); Arthur Levine, Handbook on Undergraduate Curriculum (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1978); Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York: Vintage Books, 1965 [1962]), and Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study since 1636 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977); and Claude M. Fuess, The College Board: Its First Fifty Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950). The changing role of college presidents is described in W. H. Cowley, Presidents, Professors, and Trustees: The Evolution of American Academic Government (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980) and in other works found in the endnotes.
