In 1888, when the Virginia General Assembly passed An Act to Establish a Normal School at William and Mary College in Connection with its Collegiate Course, the College once again began a struggle to resume its place in higher education in the state and in the nation.^[1]  This time, however, new leaders would encounter different problems, and their ways of meeting these challenges marked a turning point in the College’s long history. An experiment that must succeed was about to begin, and it rekindled hope among supporters and admirers of the ancient institution. At the same time, uncertainty about the College’s identity and mission emerged, and this uncertainty would plague the College well into the twentieth century.

The College Reopens

The act of 1888 had appropriated $10,000 a year for the College, which would, in turn, set up a system of normal (teacher-training) instruction for white males in conjunction with its classical collegiate course. The purpose of the act was to provide teachers for the state’s budding public school system. Each county and city could nominate one student, who could attend the College free of tuition and pay only a nominal fee ($10 a month) for board. In return, the students had to pledge to teach for two years in the state’s public schools. In addition to the ten members of the Board of Visitors (the Charter or Old Board), the governor would appoint ten Associate Visitors (the New Board). The superintendent of public instruction would be an ex officio member of the newly constituted governing body.^[2] The combined Board was to control all College funds, make all rules and regulations, and hire and fix the compensations for professors, teachers, and agents. But the act itself left unanswered such questions as the functions of each element of the dual board, the powers of the president, and the diminished authority of the faculty. Such vagueness would generate a host of difficulties as time passed.

For the present, there was much to do to ready the College for reopening with its new mission and direction. The Old Board met in Richmond on April 10, 1888, and voted to accept the provisions of the act of 1888 and asked the bursar to prepare a detailed statement of the College’s financial condition. They also requested the governor to appoint the members of the New Board. Heading the Old Board was the rector, William W. Crump, a Richmond judge who had been a member of this self-perpetuating body since 1859. Other entrenched members and their dates of election included Colonel William Lamb (1867), General William B. Taliaferro (1870), the Reverend O. S. Barten (1877), the Reverend Charles Minnegerode (1871), Judge Warner T. Jones (1873), Dr. John W. Lawson (1878), P. Montagu Thompson (1869), D. Gardiner Tyler (1877), and General Joseph E. Johnston (1878). These men had guided the College through its postwar decline and demise and would help with its rebirth.^[3]

On May 10 and 11, the combined Board, with ten new members appointed by the governor, met in Williamsburg.^[4] President Benjamin S. Ewell, now nearly seventy-eight years old, resigned to make way for a fresh and energetic younger man. The Board named Ewell president emeritus with a $400 annual stipend. Quickly adopting a new organizational plan, the Board would be guided by a president, a vice-president, and a secretary who would also be the treasurer of the College. These officers would be elected for two-year terms. Standing committees—executive, finance, curriculum, and grounds and buildings—would be appointed each year. The Board quickly selected Crump, rector of the Old Board, as president of the new one and named John L. Buchanan, the state superintendent of public instruction, as vice-president.^[5]

Determined to keep the College’s finances, including the $10,000 annuity from the state, under close scrutiny, the Board named Williamsburg alumnus William H. E. Morecock as treasurer of the College and secretary of the Board. Charged with keeping accurate accounts and submitting an annual report to the Board, the treasurer would receive all College funds and disperse them by checks countersigned by the president of the College.^[6] But even these controls would not keep William and Mary’s garbled finances straight.

Next, the Board spelled out a new curriculum, which included departments of moral science, English and history, mathematics, languages, natural science, and pedagogics (teacher training). It authorized $2,900 to repair the Main (Wren) Building, the Brafferton, the President’s House, and the College Hotel, and asked Ewell and Williamsburg Visitor P. Montagu Thompson to oversee the work. Finally, the Board elected one of its new members, Dr. John L. Buchanan, as president of the College and gave him time to consider the offer.^[7]

As Buchanan pondered the idea, the Board advertised extensively for five faculty members, each at a salary of $1,000 a year. Economic times were tight, and at least eighty-five applications poured in from around the country.^[8]  “As chairs … are rare, I shall not stand on dollars and cents,” wrote one candidate.^[9]  The Board met on July 5 and 6, debated the applications, and filled four professorships. First, it elected John Lesslie Hall, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins University, as professor of English language, literature, and history. Next, it chose Thomas Jefferson Stubbs, who had received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the College in the 1860s, as professor of mathematics. After surmounting opposition because he was an Episcopal minister, Lyman B. Wharton, who had been on the faculty from 1870 to 1881, was named professor of languages. Last, the Board chose Van Franklin Garrett, a former student and Williamsburg physician, as professor of natural science.^[10]  Interestingly, the Board selected men whom some or all of the Visitors knew personally. All were Virginians.

At the same meeting, the Board regretfully learned that Buchanan had declined the presidency. Ewell, who thought that “the success of the ‘new departure’ is, largely, dependant on his acceptance,” had shown Buchanan the campus and had tried to overcome his objections but failed to convince him. Although he was honored, Buchanan wrote the Board, he felt that he would be charged with bad faith toward the state and unsteadiness of purpose because the legislature had so recently elected him as superintendent of public instruction. The Board then launched another advertising campaign for a president who would be paid $2,000 a year, have the use of the President’s House, and who would also be professor of moral science, political economy, and civil government. At the same time, the Board began its search for a professor of normal instruction.^[11]

Once again, applications for the positions came from around the country, and the Board met on August 23, 1888, to make its selections. Fending off thirty-eight competitors, Hugh Stockdell Bird, a nineteen-year-old from Petersburg who held a licentiate of instruction from Peabody Normal School in Nashville, became professor of pedagogics. The Visitors then chose Robert L. Spencer of Williamsburg as College steward or boardinghouse keeper, at an annual salary of $350, plus two rooms in the College Hotel and free board. Also, his wife was required to perform housekeeping duties.^[12]

Turning to the presidential selection, the Board sifted the qualifications of at least seventeen applicants. More than any other candidate, Lyon G. Tyler had actively campaigned for the post by having his friends write testimonials to Board members. Even his mother pleaded on his behalf.^[13] Tyler had, after all, led the successful floor fight in the House of Delegates to secure the state annuity for the College. Although some members had reservations, the Board unanimously elected him as president of the College and professor of moral science, political economy, and civil government, but only for one year.^[14]

Lyon Gardiner Tyler was well known to the Board and at thirty-five years old, was young enough to be a child of most of its members. Born on August 24, 1853, at Sherwood Forest, the family estate in Charles City County, he was the son of John Tyler, president of the United States from 1841 to 1845, and his wife, Julia Gardiner Tyler. Accustomed to a gracious style of life, young Tyler was educated at the University of Virginia, from which he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1874 and a master of arts degree a year later. He was professor of belles lettres (literature) at William and Mary in 1877–78 and left because the College could not pay an adequate salary. He married Annie B. Tucker in November 1878. For the next four years, he served as principal of a private high school, the Memphis Institute, then moved to Richmond to practice law. He and another attorney reestablished the old Virginia Mechanics Institute night school, which had been closed since the Civil War, and Tyler taught there and was on the institute’s board of managers as well. He quickly became known in the state capital and was elected to the House of Delegates in 1887. He then became patron of the bill to reestablish William and Mary. With an unending thirst for knowledge, Tyler also became a historian and genealogist and spent years compiling the three-volume Letters and Times of the Tylers, a vindication of his father’s much-maligned presidency. He would continue his prodigious research and writing throughout his life.^[15] Tyler’s impeccable Virginia pedigree, his youthful energy and enthusiasm, his good educational credentials and obvious intelligence, his acquaintance with members of the General Assembly, his oratorical flair, his availability, and his willingness to undertake such an arduous challenge as rebuilding the defunct College, all combined to convince the Board of Visitors that he was well suited for the presidency. The College’s great experiment in higher education began when Tyler assumed the responsibilities of his office on September 1, 1888. But everyone wondered if the College, led by an inexperienced administrator, could succeed in its new mission.

As the Board made personnel and policy decisions throughout the summer, the College sprang back to life. The grounds, long covered with weed-choked debris, were soon tidy. There were only three buildings on the main campus, each infested with rats, fleas, and other vermin. The Main Building’s roof was repaired, ceilings and walls were replastered, window panes were replaced, and the interior was repainted. Similarly, the end of the summer found the President’s House and the Brafferton clean and habitable. Across Jamestown Road, the College Hotel was repaired and equipped with new furniture to house part of the student body and the steward and his family. By this time Tyler had arrived and thrived on the activity. “I hate having nothing to do!” he wrote.^[16]

In preparation for reopening the College, Tyler assembled the faculty on September 8, 1888, to prepare a course of study. Gone was sole reliance on the classical curriculum that Ewell had defended so vigorously. Instead, students could follow the familiar collegiate course or pursue the vocational teacher-training program. “We want the public to know that we are progressive teachers, and that we represent various large institutions of learning … [and] shall pour new blood into the veins of public education in Virginia,” wrote one excited professor.^[17] Soon the faculty devised rules of conduct and of disciplinary procedures and prepared class schedules. Classes would begin at 8:45 a.m. and meet six days a week.^[18]

For weeks the College had waged an intensive publicity campaign, trying to recruit students. Newspaper and journal advertisements, flyers, posters proclaiming “Education on Easy Terms! … Gratuitous Instruction for All Willing to Teach in Public Schools for Two Years,” letters to county school superintendents, and contacts by faculty and Board members generated statewide interest. Finally, all was ready, but would students actually come?^[19]

William and Mary reopened on October 4, and the great experiment began. Tyler and natural science professor Garrett met incoming trains bringing the fledgling scholars, and Tyler soon knew most by name. At first there were about four dozen boys, and their numbers grew to 102 for the session. All were Virginians, predominately from the eastern section, although some were from northern and western counties. Most students lived in the College Hotel, some in the Brafferton, and others boarded at private homes in Williamsburg.^[20]

There was only one entrance requirement, which had been set by the Board of Visitors: students had to be at least fifteen years old. Secondary schooling was virtually nonexistent in Virginia, so pedagogy professor Bird conducted entrance examinations to place the students in either college or preparatory classes. Most students took advantage of the tuition-free teacher-training program and only paid ten dollars for books; other students paid an additional twenty-five dollars for tuition.^[21] William and Mary thus attracted young men from less affluent families who otherwise would have been unable to finance college costs.

Teacher Training and the Matthew Whaley
Observation and Practice School

By launching into the untried field of teacher training, William and Mary capitalized on the mounting need for professionally educated teachers for Virginia’s rapidly growing public school system. The Underwood Constitution of 1869 had mandated a system of free public schools, which the legislature soon established, under the administration of a State Board of Education, the superintendent of public instruction, division superintendents, district trustees, and then county school boards. Most Virginians were slow to realize that their children’s teachers needed any sort of special training for their jobs, so it was not until 1882 that the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute at Petersburg, a coeducational public training school for blacks, was established. Two years later the General Assembly authorized the Virginia Female Normal School at Farmville for white women.^[22] There was no teacher-training facility for white men.

William and Mary had tried to fill this emerging void, beginning in 1877 when the Board of Visitors petitioned the General Assembly for financial relief and volunteered its primary school as a normal and practice school. Five years later Ewell urged the Board to act speedily to convert the College into a state normal school.^[23]  Another six years passed before the College could convince the legislature to establish the state male normal school on its campus.

Now the teacher-training program got started under the direction of the professor of pedagogics, Hugh S. Bird. William and Mary offered more than simply teacher training, because this course was intertwined with the collegiate studies, taught by the regular professors. After reviewing basic courses taught in public schools, students must master junior (first year) natural science and moral science, and intermediate (second year) English, history, mathematics, Latin, and methods and pedagogics. They also studied psychology, geometry, and physiology and hygiene. Later, courses in mechanical drawing and manual training broadened the offerings. After successfully completing the two-year program, students earned licentiates of instruction. The College encouraged these young men to stay an extra year and earn a bachelor of arts degree as well, and many did so. By 1903, graduates of the state normal schools and departments received teachers’ certificates enabling them to teach in the public schools with no additional examinations. In 1904 the normal course at the College was raised to three years, two at the collegiate level.^[24]

All beginning teachers need to observe students in their classrooms and to hone their own newfound skills. At first, normal students, under Bird’s watchful eye, practiced teaching in lower-level classes set up at the College for “backward” students.^[25]  Although this provided the necessary observation and practice and permitted slower students to gain basic, primary school knowledge, it was not equivalent to actual experience in a school filled with young children.

William and Mary had owned such a school for years. The College had been the beneficiary of the estate of Mrs. Mary Whaley, who had left funds to “eternalize forever” her son Mattey, who had died in childhood. In 1870, four years after receiving a legacy of $8,470, the College bought ten acres of land and built a brick schoolhouse on the site of the colonial Governor’s Palace and named it Mattey School.^[26] In 1873 the recently organized Williamsburg School Board reached an agreement with the College to use the schoolhouse as a free public school for white boys. The financially strapped College and the school board continued this arrangement until 1884, when the school board negotiated a ten-year lease for the school, which would then teach both boys and girls. But when William and Mary reopened in 1888 with its new teacher-training mission, it needed the building for a practice school.^[27]

Initially, the school board seemed interested in an association of the white schools with the normal department, but in 1889 the school board rejected a College suggestion for reorganizing the Mattey School in conjunction with William and Mary. Years of litigation followed. In March 1892 Tyler submitted a proposal that both the College and the city be released from the 1884 contract, which the school board turned down. It promptly filed suit against the faculty as a corporate body for claims against the Mary Whaley bequest trust fund.^[28] That the faculty was sued as a corporate body illustrates the lingering uncertainty of who exercised what authority under the act of 1888. The faculty immediately authorized Tyler to bring a suit for unlawful detainer for the premises. In June Tyler offered another compromise plan; the Common Council of the city and the school board approved it, but the Board of Visitors rejected it.^[29]  There the matter hung for another year.

In June 1893 the Board of Visitors submitted still another proposal to break the stalemate, but this time the school board would not accept it unless the College would indemnify the school board for legal costs over seventy-five dollars. The Board of Visitors balked. No further action developed until June 1894, when the Visitors demanded the key to the schoolhouse. The old ten-year contract had finally expired.^[30]

Although the school board relinquished the key, it persisted in trying to take over the Mattey schoolhouse. In 1895 the school board asked the Board of Visitors to lease some land adjacent to the Mattey School for a city schoolhouse. The Visitors agreed, if the school board would leave the Mattey site in six months. The next year the school board proposed buying the Mattey School and its property, but the Board of Visitors declined, saying the College had no right to sell the trust under which it controlled the school. Williamsburg built its own elementary school on Nicholson Street, and years passed before there were any attempts at cooperation between the city and the College on schools.^[31]

When William and Mary got its school back in 1894, plans began for opening the model and practice school in the fall, under Bird’s direction. Tyler had high hopes: this was not to be an old field school or an ordinary public school but a model school, with teachers trained and experienced in the new educational theories. Bird chose Lucy L. Davis for assistant principal and teacher-in-charge. She had had years of experience as a teacher, then a principal, of two grammar schools in Lynchburg. She soon became the principal. The building was spruced up, and new furniture and equipment awaited the students.^[32]

Its name more formalized, the Matthew Whaley Model and Practice School. opened in October 1894 and provided the first three primary grades for 24 children, aged six to ten. The school met a real local need and was, as well, a training facility for the College’s normal students. Rapidly expanding, the model school provided a fourth grade in 1896 and later a kindergarten.^[33] In 1902 Tyler urged still further development and with the Board’s approval, negotiated with the school board for a union of the first three grades of the model school and the public school. By the fall of 1905, the model school had been remodeled, and the combined system educated about 120 children and had a staff of the principal and three assistants.^[34]

As the model school increased in pupils, so, too, did the College’s teacher-training program, which, by 1905–1906, enrolled 118—nearly one-half of the student body of 244. The College kept track of these young men after they earned the licentiate of instruction and found that most, in redeeming their pledge, became teachers in the public schools. Later, some became principals, superintendents, or inspectors in the state education system. Others were released from their pledges by reimbursing the College for tuition. When Virginia established the State Board of Examiners and Inspectors in 1905, William and Mary men quickly became dominant on it. They were, after all, still the only white male educators professionally trained at a state college.^[35] The College offered continuing education for female teachers as well. Starting in 1894, it conducted a summer institute at the College for “schoolmarms,” giving these “lazy lambs,” as one professor called them, the opportunity to learn the latest pedagogical skills.^[36]

The guiding force behind William and Mary’s teacher-training program and its model school was Hugh Stockdell Bird, professor of methods and pedagogics. Bird had emphatic ideas about teacher training, and his impatience with the fact that his department was part of the faculty rather than an independent entity led to conflict with both the faculty and the Board of Visitors. Although he reported regularly to the faculty on work done in his department, he tried to sidestep it in October 1894 by reading his report on the model school to the Board’s Executive Committee. This group sharply reminded him that the model school was “part and parcel” of the College and that Bird, like other professors, should report to the faculty.^[37] The following March the faculty instructed Bird to submit monthly or bimonthly written reports, and two years later it appointed two faculty members to visit the model school each month-against Bird’s wishes. It also requested the Board of Visitors to clarify the duties and authority of the faculty in relation to the school. The Board gave a definitive answer: the model school, like any other department, was under the management and control of the College.^[38]  With his wings clipped, Bird generated no more controversy. He resigned in 1904, and Bruce R. Payne replaced him for a year; then Alexander B. Coffey became professor of philosophy and Education and supervisor of the model school.

The Collegiate Course

William and Mary’s collegiate course attracted just as many students as its teacher-training program. The split in the curriculum between classical and vocational education was typical of many colleges in the United States in the late nineteenth century and reflected a disharmony of purpose of higher education. Was college training to continue to educate only the gentlemanly elite, or was it to offer opportunity to the lower and middle classes? During the 1890s the traditional classical course faded away in institutions such as Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, and Columbia. Even the classical mainstays, Greek and Latin, were dead or dying. In their places, modern languages, English literature, fine arts, natural science, and philosophy came to the fore.^[39] Similarly, at William and Mary the collegiate curriculum underwent great changes between 1888 and 1906.

When the College reopened in 1888, courses leading to a bachelor of arts degree provided a generalized education with no concentration. Students had some latitude in choosing the departments in which they would take the most courses. The Board of Visitors had stipulated five departments: moral science, political economy, and civil government; English language and history; mathematics; ancient and modern languages; and natural science; and two of these were subdivided into schools. There was a school of English and a school of history within the English and history department, and there were schools of Latin, Greek, French, and German within the language department. In 1892 ancient and modern languages far too great a load for one professor-split into the department of Latin and the department of Greek, French, and German.^[40]

In degree of difficulty, William and Mary’s collegiate course was more comparable to a twentieth century high school than to a college, and junior (beginning) classes started with fundamentals of a particular subject. In mathematics, for example, students studied arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, and in their senior year, calculus. To earn a degree, all students had to “graduate” (complete the highest senior-level classes offered) in two departments and show “proficiency” (complete the level just below senior) in the other three departments. Only three schools were necessary for languages, with graduation in one; in English and history, graduation in one school sufficed. Graduation in methods and pedagogics could substitute for one other department. In 1890 the faculty stiffened degree requirements by adding a mandatory thesis. For a master of arts degree, students must graduate in all five departments—again, there was no specialization.^[41] That same year Tyler proposed an innovation—a chair of “ostrealogy” (oyster studies), with an experimental farm in the York River. The oyster chair idea got nowhere for fifty years, until the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory began at Yorktown.^[42]

As time went on, the faculty adopted new degree requirements. In 1894 the bachelor’s degree called for diplomas (the same as the old “graduation”) in three departmental schools and proficiency in the other six. Pedagogics could be substituted for Greek. The master’s degree required diplomas in all schools except pedagogics, which could not be used as a substitute, a rule which was soon relaxed. A new degree of bachelor of literature, which was not as demanding as the bachelor of arts, required less mathematics and no natural science.^[43] As the academic degree standards improved, the College also expanded subcollegiate offerings in English, mathematics, Latin, Greek, and natural science, and called them introductory pedagogy, but abolished lower-level preparatory classes in 1896.^[44]

In 1898 Tyler recommended, and the Board approved, a restructuring of several departments, including his own. His moral philosophy course, for two centuries the capstone of the senior year, was placed in the department of pedagogy and divided into psychology, ethics, and logic. Tyler’s department, now called American history and politics, took over the American history classes, freeing the English department, now English language and literature and general history, to devote more time to teaching grammar and syntax, “in which … the youth seem to be deficient,” and to history other than American.^[45] More tinkering with the master’s degree led to the faculty’s implementing, in 1904, revised requirements: students must earn five diplomas beyond the bachelor’s degree and complete senior physics.^[46]

For several years Tyler had been trying to secure a place for William and Mary on the Carnegie Foundation’s list of colleges whose professors would be eligible for retirement pensions. The foundation’s strict standards helped to motivate changes in the College’s admissions policy and in its collegiate curriculum.^[47] Tyler was also trying to move the College toward state ownership, and this, too, would require a more standardized curriculum.^[48]

In 1905 the College began a general overhaul of its admissions and degree requirements. It instituted its first entrance requirements, other than the minimum age requirement of fifteen years: a knowledge of English grammar and composition, American or Virginia history, mathematics through plane geometry, a one-year course in a natural science, a fundamental knowledge of Latin, and one year of Greek or a modern language.^[49]  By the fall of 1906, the College had abolished the bachelor of literature degree and the licentiate of instruction. A three-year prescribed program for normal students led to a teachers’ diploma. The bachelor of arts now stipulated 120 credits, including at least 15 upper-level credits in a major and a thesis. For the first time, William and Mary offered the bachelor of science degree, with the same number of credits and a thesis required. The College specified eighty hours in prescribed arts and sciences courses for all students. The master of arts degree called for twenty-five higher-level hours of subjects previously taken for the bachelor’s degree and a thesis.^[50] There was still no graduate specialization. Along with these sweeping changes, a separate department of biology split off from natural science; and a new department of drawing and manual arts, which most normal schools already had, began. Pedagogy was now called “Education.”^[51]

The upgrading of William and Mary’s entrance requirements and curriculum placed the collegiate course more in the mainstream of American academic development in the early twentieth century. It was not as flexible as many colleges, which had replaced the old classical curriculum with a balanced program of distribution requirements, concentrations, and electives.^[52] As the quality of the William and Mary degree improved, other colleges began acknowledging its academic value. In 1905, for example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology started awarding the William Barton Rogers scholarship to a William and Mary graduate or student, and Washington and Lee College offered a scholarship for a William and Mary student wishing to study law there.^[53]

Those Who Taught: The Seven Wise Men

The reborn College of William and Mary was extremely fortunate in its faculty. In spite of the meager salary of $1,000 a year, it attracted an extraordinary group, fondly called the Seven Wise Men, who transformed the quality of teaching and the direction of the curriculum. In an age when a doctoral degree was just beginning to be a requisite for faculty, three of a teaching staff of seven held doctorates, one held an honorary doctor of divinity degree, and another was a doctor of medicine.^[54] These men with advanced degrees would energize the slumbering College and propel it into the twentieth century.

Lyon G. Tyler was not only the president but a full-time professor and scholar as well. He had earned bachelor and master of arts degrees from the University of Virginia, studied and practiced law, taught, and had begun a career in historical research and publishing.^[55] As a teacher at the College, he conducted classes in moral philosophy, political economy, civil government, and psychology, and then with the curriculum changes in 1898 and 1906, American history and politics, economics, and political science. The object of any course, thought Tyler, was to teach students to think.^[56] A gifted and humorous teacher, he made his classes sparkle with vivid lectures and reincarnations of men from the texts. He was especially fond of emphasizing the importance of William and Mary men in shaping American history.^[57]

Tyler’s scholarly activities continued unabated. During his presidency he wrote or edited a number of major books, articles, and pamphlets, and contributed to other publications. In addition to completing his three-volume Letters and Times of the Tylers in 1896, he published such works as Parties and Patronage in the United States (1891), The Cradle of the Republic (1900), and England in America: 1580–1652 (1904), part of Albert Bushnell Hart’s The American Nation series. He found time to pen local histories such as The Mattey Whaley Model and Practice School (1895) and Bruton Church (1895). An unabashedly unreconstructed Southerner, he took every opportunity to praise Virginia and the whole South. Later in his presidency, he wrote Williamsburg: The Old Colonial Capital (1907) and The College of William and Mary in Virginia (1907), and he edited the three-volume Men of Mark in Virginia (1906–1909), Narratives of Early Virginia (1907), and the five-volume Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography (1915). But most important for the College, in 1892 Tyler founded, and edited, the William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Papers, the forerunner of the present Quarterly.^[58]

In the early years of the twentieth century, Tyler jumped on the educational reform bandwagon. A product of the Progressive impulse, reform of the educational system gained steam and adherents in Virginia. In 1900 several prominent families organized the Richmond Education Association to improve public education there.^[59] Two years later, northern philanthropist Robert C. Ogden financed the regional Southern Education Board, and the two groups cooperated in founding the Cooperative Education Association of Virginia in 1903. Tyler and several faculty members attended their meeting in Richmond in April. The next year an education-minded governor, Andrew J. Montague, called leaders of these organizations together to plan statewide reforms. Educational activist and Board of Visitors member Beverley B. Munford asked Tyler to name several College representatives to attend a Cooperative Education Association meeting in December. In 1905, with revivalist zeal, they took their quest for better schools across the entire state in the famous May Campaign.^[60] More and improved public schools would benefit William and Mary as well as the children of the state by increasing the demand for trained teachers.

Tyler’s whirlwind activities and accomplishments made him preoccupied and at times, absentminded. Stories abound about his forgetfulness. One tale told of his driving his horse and buggy to the post office, getting his mail, then briskly walking back to the President’s House. When he discovered that his carriage was missing, he sent servants out to search for it. Another story recounted his taking two of his children to Richmond, telling them that he would meet them on the corner of Seventh and Main Streets, then later taking the train home—alone.^[61] Whether absentminded or not, Tyler was the catalyst in rebuilding William and Mary. Later, as a tribute to his achievements, Trinity College in Connecticut awarded him an honorary doctor of law degree in 1895; and in 1912 and 1914, the University of Pittsburgh and Brown University each granted him the same degree.

There were other dedicated members of the faculty who played their part in the rejuvenation of the College. The first one elected by the Board in 1888 was John Lesslie Hall, professor of English and history. Born in 1856 in Richmond, he attended Randolph-Macon College and the University of Virginia before entering the doctoral program at Johns Hopkins University in 1885. He finished the degree requirements in 1892, and like others with Hopkins doctorates, wanted to shake up the collegiate educational process. “My work must influence English teaching in Virginia,” he wrote. Before he arrived at the College in September 1888, he had asked the Board for funds to buy English and history books. “The scientific study of English is such a recent thing,” he explained, adding that he did not have the necessary texts for students.^[62] Hall felt so strongly about adequately trained faculty that when the College needed to hire additional professors, Hall consistently urged Tyler to select professional teachers and scholars.^[63]

Hall taught English and history and then after the 1898 curriculum reorganization, English language and literature and general history. A demanding professor, he rigorously drilled his students and required monthly essays of a caliber suitable for the William and Mary Monthly literary magazine. Inspiring both admiration and fear, Hall was a colorful and entertaining lecturer who instilled a deep love of the English language and literature and of Southern history in his students.^[64]

A research scholar as well as a teacher, Hall was an authority on Anglo-Saxon literature. He published translations of Beowulf (1893) and of Judith, Phoenix, and Other Anglo-Saxon Poems (1902), wrote Judas: A Drama in Five Acts (1894), and Old English Idylls (1899), coedited the Anglo-Saxon Reader (1901), and perpetuated the Lost Cause in Half-Hours in Southern History (1907).^[65] With the poor research facilities at the College and Hall’s heavy teaching load, it was laudable that he, like Tyler, could manage such scholarly productivity. Hall became dean of the faculty in 1905 and relieved Tyler of some of his duties (mostly disciplinary) with the students and also filled in as acting president when Tyler was out of town.

Next in seniority was Thomas Jefferson Stubbs, professor of mathematics. Born in 1841 in Gloucester County, Stubbs earned a bachelor’s degree from William and Mary in 1860, served in the Confederate army, then studied at the University of Virginia for a year. In 1868 he became master of the Mattey and Grammar School at the College and also received an honorary master of arts degree there the next year. For the next sixteen years, he was professor of mathematics and history at Arkansas College, which granted him an honorary doctor of philosophy degree in 1882. He edited the Arkansas Gazette and was in the state legislature for two terms. He returned to William and Mary in 1888.^[66]

Stubbs had the unenviable task of teaching the usually poorly prepared entering students the rudiments of arithmetic, algebra, and plane geometry, culminating in the senior year with trigonometry, analytical geometry, and calculus. Stubbs emphasized mathematical rules and reasons and classroom demonstrations in training future teachers of mathematics. By the time of the 1898 reorganization, there was an introductory class to prepare students for college courses, and senior mathematics had advanced to differential and integral calculus. By 1905 a course in mechanics had been added.^[67]

Regarded as a stern disciplinarian, Stubbs effortlessly controlled his sometimes rambunctious classes while he taught in a simple and direct manner. He became known as a friend to students in trouble, often standing up for them at faculty disciplinary sessions. An avid sports fan, Stubbs organized the College’s first formal baseball team in 1894 and worked with it for many years.^[68]

The fourth and oldest member of the 1888 faculty was Lyman Brown Wharton, professor of ancient and modern languages. He was born in Bedford County in 1831 and attended the University of Virginia from 1849 to 1852 and the Virginia Theological Seminary from 1854 to 1856. Ordained an Episcopal priest in 1860, he served as a Confederate chaplain. He taught Latin and Greek at William and Mary from 1870 until it closed in 1881, when he sorrowfully resigned. He then became rector of Bruton Parish Church.^[69]  The College awarded him an honorary doctor of divinity in 1876.

When the College reopened, Wharton taught all the language classes—Latin, Greek, French, and German. A thorough scholar, Wharton believed his students should learn to think in a foreign language in order to master it and also as a mental discipline. To relieve often tedious classroom drills and translations, Wharton displayed a wry sense of humor, and each year he had an ice cream party for his students.^[70]

All students had to take languages, and Wharton’s burden became too great for one professor. In 1892 the Board of Visitors authorized splitting the language department and hiring another professor of Greek, French, and German. Wharton continued to teach Latin until he retired as professor emeritus in 1906. Tyler succeeded in securing a pension from the Carnegie Foundation Retiring Fund for Wharton—the first in the College’s history. He had only a short while to enjoy it, however, for in 1907, dressed in his uniform, he died at the Williamsburg railroad station while awaiting a train to take him to a Confederate reunion.^[71]

Another Confederate veteran, Van Franklin Garrett, the professor of natural science, was the fifth of the Seven Wise Men. Born in Williamsburg in 1846, he attended the Virginia Military Institute and as a cadet, fought in the battle of Newmarket. He remained in the Confederate army throughout the war, then attended the University of Virginia before earning a medical degree in 1868 at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York. He practiced medicine in Baltimore and later taught at Giles College in Tennessee. William and Mary awarded him an honorary master of arts degree in 1872.^[72]

For years Garrett was the entire science department. At first the sciences consisted of geography, botany, physiology and hygiene, physics, chemistry, and organic chemistry. Most students had little or no secondary preparation in sciences, so the level of instruction was rudimentary. There were a primitive physics laboratory and a chemical laboratory that allowed some student experiments. Finally, in 1905, biology, with its own professor, was separated from natural science, and Garrett then taught physics and chemistry. That same year a new science building opened, providing ample lecture rooms and up-to-date laboratories.^[73]

A thorough and conscientious teacher, he encouraged students’ interest in scientific studies. Gentle, patient, and kind, Garrett got along well with the students and often championed them in faculty disciplinary hearings. He was the most beloved of all the faculty.^[74]

The sixth member of this extraordinary faculty was Hugh Stockdell Bird, professor of methods and pedagogics, who had been born in Petersburg in 1869. He brought definite ideas about teacher training from the Peabody Normal School, where he had earned a licentiate of instruction in 1888. Although some faculty felt that Bird’s youth was a detriment to commanding students’ respect, all cooperated with him in devising classes in their departments for training teachers. Energetic and forceful, Bird vividly demonstrated how to teach younger pupils, and his students took his techniques to schools all over Virginia.^[75]

Bird’s title changed to professor of pedagogy in 1893, then to professor of philosophy and pedagogy five years later, and he was supervising principal of the model school when it opened in 1894. On Bird fell the responsibility of the success of William and Mary’s new and untried mission of training male teachers for the public school system. Attesting to his highly effective teaching techniques, requests for William and Mary men as teachers, principals, and superintendents came from all over Virginia.^[76]  Bird resigned in 1904, the first of the Seven Wise Men to leave William and Mary.^[77]

When the language department split in 1892, the final Wise Man joined the faculty. Charles Edward Bishop became professor of Greek, French, and German and relieved Wharton of some of his arduous duties. A native of Petersburg, Bishop was born in 1861 and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1883. He was the only faculty member to have pursued graduate study in Germany, and he earned a doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1889. He then taught Latin at Emory and Henry College until he joined the William and Mary faculty.^[78]

A meticulous classical scholar, Bishop taught Greek, French, and German and drilled his students until they mastered the grammatical fundamentals; then he moved them into literature. He hoped to teach his students “the elevating thoughts and dreams of the ancient intellects.” He continued his own research and published a series of articles in the American Journal of Philology.^[79]

These seven men—Tyler, Hall, Stubbs, Wharton, Garrett, Bird, and Bishop—comprised the faculty in the early years after William and Mary reopened. They had many common characteristics: all were Virginians; six of them had attended the University of Virginia; three were Confederate veterans, the rest shared pro-Southern sentiments; all held progressive ideas about higher education and teacher training; and above anything else, all were determined that the College’s great experiment would succeed. These men, recalled one alumnus, “featured loyalty to the traditions of the past, high civic virtues, love of country, and attention to duty.”^[80]

They worked hard and spent between fifteen and twenty hours a week in the classroom, although as time went on, several had assistants or student instructors to help. The pay was poor—$2,000 for the president and $1,000 for each professor in 1888. Four years later, salaries went up to $2,300 for the president and $1,500 for professors.^[81]  There were no benefits such as medical and life insurance or retirement pay. The only exception was Wharton’s retirement stipend from the Carnegie Foundation.

And Those Who Learned: The Students

When the College reopened in 1888, 102 students attended the first session. About one-half were state students, whose tuition was funded by the state in return for their pledges to teach in the public schools for two years. Of the rest, a few were ministerial students, and others were sons of alumni or young men seeking an inexpensive collegiate education. Most came from eastern Virginia. By 1906 there were 244 students—118 state students, 100 paying students, 12 ministerial students, 8 scholarship holders, and 6 College officers’ sons or tutors. Eastern Virginians still predominated, although more came from the northern and western parts of the state, and there was a smattering of out-of-state students. The students were young: many were only fifteen years old.^[82]

Most students lived in the College Hotel, the Brafferton, or the new Taliaferro dormitory built in 1894. The rest lived in boardinghouses in Williamsburg, which had been approved by the faculty. People in the city welcomed the students and usually provided refreshments and camaraderie for the always-hungry and often-homesick young men. “Williamsburg was a delightful place,” recalled a former student. “The people believed in something—the church, and the Thomas Jefferson and George Mason principles of government.”^[83]

Most of the students were poor, so the College assisted them. In addition to state scholarships for future teachers, there were other forms of financial aid to offset the cost of tuition, which by 1905 was $35 a year, with other fees of $13, and boarding fees of $126 ($108 for state students). By then the College offered four named scholarships, two others founded by Board member Robert M. Hughes, and scholarships granted by the faculty to high schools in ten cities.^[84]  In 1905 the College received a bequest of $750, and the income from this money formed a loan fund to help “poor and deserving boys” get an education. Those receiving this aid were honor bound to return the money as soon as possible so that others could use it.^[85]

Although William and Mary had long defended itself against charges that it was located in an unhealthy area, College officials constantly touted the “salubrity” of the climate.^[86]  The students generally had few sicknesses, but several diseases caused great alarm. Because of widespread smallpox in Virginia in early 1899, the College physician vaccinated the student body and later, confined the students to the campus to avoid exposure.^[87] Typhoid scares were not uncommon. In 1891 one student died from the disease, another in late 1905.^[88] To look after the health of the students, the College hired a part-time physician in 1891 and soon built a modern infirmary.^[89]

In 1904 the first manifestation of student self-government began with a senior class resolution proclaiming that pantry raids, chicken stealing, and other small thefts must be stopped. Two years later students recommended that a committee of seniors and class presidents handle violations, “since we should have the honor system in its entirety and not in part.” They believed they were capable of handling such student affairs. Without giving up its disciplinary authority, the faculty concurred.^[90] The students’ relationship with the faculty was extremely close, and the faculty served not only as teachers but as parental substitutes. During this era in loco parentis reached its apex with the faculty’s obsessive supervision of not only academic progress but social conduct and morals. Every month the faculty discussed the scholastic standing of each student and warned those not making adequate progress. It was also the College’s task to inspire students to follow in the footsteps of patriots, statesmen, scholars, and divines such as had studied at William and Mary throughout her glorious history.^[91] The young gentlemen must be molded by strict rules and rigid discipline. In fact, concern for discipline occupied the most prominent place in faculty meetings throughout the 1890s.

Mindful of their in loco parentis responsibilities, the president and the faculty devised a complex battery of rules. All students had to attend morning roll call and chapel services. Strictly forbidden were possessing or using firearms, lying, cheating, swearing and indecent language, hazing in any form, writing on walls of buildings or defacing property, and playing ball near any College buildings (the fine was twenty-five cents for the last violation). Students could not play cards or billiards, game, visit barrooms, have intoxicants in their possession, board in hotels serving liquor, or go more than six miles from Williamsburg without permission. All class absences had to be excused. The faculty also thought the students should retire by midnight.^[92]

With little to occupy them, students inevitably got into trouble, and sometimes misconduct combined several offenses. For example, on March 22, 1890, about forty students had gone to Yorktown (some fourteen miles away), had frequented barrooms, and had become “intoxicated, noisy, and boisterous.” One walked into the river; another tried to kill himself. To liven up the party, another student brandished his pistol and fired it indiscriminately. When first questioned about the excursion, the students denied taking part in it. After a lengthy investigation, the faculty suspended some, put others on probation, and reprimanded the rest.^[93]

Another episode in May 1891 revealed more boyish enthusiasm—and hunger—than malicious disobedience. Six students “stole a fowl from Mr. Morris; broke open the College storehouse and stole strawberries therefrom; and took beef, lard, and radishes from Dr. L. Henley’s refrigerator on Saturday night last.” They then prepared and feasted on these delicacies. When caught, the ringleader of this epicurean adventure also confessed to having taken the clapper from the College bell and having put a goat in the chapel. The faculty made him withdraw from the College and leave town, and they publicly reprimanded the others.^[94]

A more serious case in the spring of 1898 brought a different twist to the usual breaches of good conduct. The faculty held a special meeting on April 1 to investigate rumors of “certain practices between students and between students and certain College officers.” At daily meetings, lasting well into the night, the faculty called numerous witnesses and sifted through their testimony. Deeply disturbed by the nature of the charges, the faculty concluded that they had insufficient evidence, but they accepted the voluntary withdrawals of four students, forced the resignation of another student who was also an instructor, but declined to bring findings against a College official, who quickly resigned anyway.^[95] Armed with attorneys, the families of three students asked that their sons be reinstated to complete their degrees. The faculty readmitted one and turned another case over to the Executive Committee of the Board of Visitors, which allowed the student to return to the College.^[96] In those days homosexuality, never openly stated, but certainly implicit in the records, was an abomination, and the scandal shook the entire College community.^[97]

The faculty spent an extraordinary amount of time on these and other cases. Their investigations took on the nature of legal trials: summoning the accused, hearing sworn testimony from witnesses, holding lengthy deliberations, and finally announcing verdicts. Punishments were as varied as the offenses and included an appearance before the faculty, admonishment by them and the president, written apologies, public apologies and reprimands, removal from the College Hotel, probation, suspension, and finally, expulsion. The faculty became so overwhelmed with disciplinary matters that they appointed a committee of Professors Hall and Bird in January 1898 to handle less serious complaints.^[98]

Exacerbating many disciplinary problems was the students’ ready access to liquor—there were thirteen bars in Williamsburg in 1892. Tyler and the faculty waged unrelenting war against the proliferation of bars, especially those serving underage students. Repeatedly warning local proprietors and students against the sale or use of intoxicants, the College rejoiced when the county court withdrew the licenses of every bar in the city. But new judges granted new licenses, and local police failed to enforce existing laws, so bars slowly returned; in 1900 one such establishment opened within a block of the College. The next year a local option law passed, but a “social club” (with two bartenders) opened less than half a mile from the College, and another “club” opened within yards of the College gate. In 1902 the faculty requested the Board to help in the fight by asking the General Assembly to prohibit the sale of intoxicants anywhere near the College. This failed, and the students continued imbibing. In 1904 some stores introduced “chemical cider,” which touched off a wave of drunkenness at the College and in the city. Tyler swore out a warrant against the storekeepers, and they were convicted and fined. The town council then passed an ordinance prohibiting the sale of chemical or any other cider. Two years later, after a train ride by raucous students returning from a baseball game, the faculty insisted that all students sign a pledge not to drink while at William and Mary.^[99] Old demon rum was driven underground.

The Extracurriculum

Students were often in for a shock when they arrived in Williamsburg to go to William and Mary. They had learned of the city’s beautiful buildings and social amenities in the colonial era and still expected similar residences, theaters, shops, and other structures. Instead, they found a dilapidated town with about eighteen hundred inhabitants. The Powder Magazine was there, but the ruins of the stately capitol and the sites of the Governor’s Palace and the Raleigh Tavern were all that remained of “ye Ancient Capital.”^[100] The College was even outside the city limits, in James City County.

Although the townspeople were hospitable, there was little entertainment for college-age boys. General stores, churches, hotels, residences, and bars (off limits for students) lined Main (now Duke of Gloucester) Street, and there were weekly dances at the Eastern Lunatic Asylum on Francis Street (now Eastern State Hospital at Dunbar).^[101] Such limited possibilities for local entertainment, combined with the strict regulations imposed by the faculty, caused students at William and Mary, like their counterparts across the country, to turn their youthful energies to extracurricular activities. At their heyday during the Tyler era, these nonacademic features of College life offered intellectual challenges for some, physical outlets for others, and socializing for many.^[102]

The most widely enjoyed activities revolved around the two literary societies, both founded before the Civil War. The Phoenix and Philomathean literary societies met each Saturday night, and each chose readers, essayists, orators, declaimers, and debaters to discourse on weighty subjects, such as “Immigration Should Be Restricted in the United States.” Perhaps serious topics provided the challenge often lacking in the students’ academic work. The societies competed for prizes, and the two best speakers delivered orations during commencement. Soon the College received invitations to send representatives to compete with other collegiate orators.^[103] On the lighter side, the societies often gave impromptu hops after their meetings, with student musicians providing the sound effects.^[104]

A direct offshoot of the literary societies was the first student publication, the William and Mary College Monthly, which began in 1890. Aspiring authors wrote essays, poems, articles, and anecdotes; and each issue carried an editorial, College news, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) notes, and alumni news. The Monthly ran until 1903, when its name changed to the William and Mary Literary Magazine. The new name, felt the editor, would emphasize the exclusive literary focus of the publication.^[105] In 1899 the first College yearbook, the Colonial Echo, appeared, and this annual, with a few interruptions, has continued until the present.^[106]

Equally as well attended as the literary societies were the meetings of the YMCA, established at William and Mary in 1888. In addition to welcoming new students, the YMCA tried to get them on firm Christian footing before they encountered “the evil influences that are common to every college.” The organization met weekly, operated a reading room, and encouraged students to attend local Sunday schools. Williamsburg ministers helped out, and faculty members lectured on Biblical history and conducted Bible study classes. The members also joined the temperance and purity societies and participated in mission work. Membership ranged from between one-third to two-thirds of the student body.^[107]

Another extracurricular activity, officially unrecognized at William and Mary before the 1890s, was athletics. The faculty approved a partial holiday on June 8, 1891, for the “base-ball team,” whether for practice or a game is unclear. In December 1892 the faculty authorized an afternoon off for the football club to play a match game. The following year the newly formed Athletic Association requested permission for the football team to play several collegiate games which failed to materialize. On November 11, the team did play the Norfolk YMCA and lost, 16–0. Two more contests, which William and Mary won, completed the season.^[108] The team did not develop much until later in the decade, and in 1898 it defeated Randolph-Macon, then lost to Richmond College. Finally, under coach J. Morrill Blanchard, William and Mary won second place in the Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Association’s Eastern Division championships in 1904.^[109]

In those days at the College, baseball generated more enthusiasm than football, and in 1894 the first baseball team played against a local team and was routed. Under the enthusiastic tutelage of Professor Stubbs, the team improved in the late 1890s, and in 1905 the team, also coached by Blanchard, had a 5–0 season.^[110] Other sports began appearing. There were tennis and bicycle clubs, and when the new gymnasium opened in 1901, a gymnasium team. By 1905–1906 there were track and basketball teams.^[111]  Throughout these years the College colors for athletic teams were orange and white.

The faculty kept tight control of the teams and in 1896 issued regulations governing them. Team members must be matriculated students, must have parental permission to play in out-of-town games, and must not neglect their studies or miss classes.^[112] Two years later the faculty emphatically rejected a request from the Athletic Association to provide support at the College Hotel and free matriculation for a good baseball pitcher. Strongly deploring such “professionalism,” the faculty promptly enforced its control of athletics.^[113]

Still another source of entertainment, as well as a way to socialize, were the fraternities. Some had had chapters at the College before it closed in 1881 and quickly reopened; others soon established chapters. By the fall of 1905, there were five fraternities on campus—Kappa Alpha, Kappa Sigma, Pi Kappa Alpha, Theta Delta Chi, and Sigma Phi Epsilon—averaging about a dozen members each. The faculty had to keep emphasizing that the fraternities could not serve wine or liquor at their banquets.^[114] There is no record of whether or not the members complied.

A fraternity of another sort—Phi Beta Kappa—had been founded at William and Mary on December 5, 1776, but its Virginia Alpha chapter was not reactivated after the Civil War. In September 1893 the remaining members at the College—Ewell and Board members Taliaferro and Lamb—met and planned to resuscitate the chapter. At a general meeting in December, the members elected Professors Tyler, Stubbs, Bird, Hall, Garrett, Bishop, and College Librarian Charles W. Coleman.^[115] Thereafter, the honorary society met several times a year and elected Visitors, faculty, and men distinguished in arts, sciences, or education to their midst. In 1905 the chapter began selecting promising young alumni, so the society then had two classes of membership: one for outstanding attainment and the other for exceptional potential.^[116]

Graduates of the College were also the targets of another organization, the Alumni Association, which the Board had promptly reactivated in 1888 to generate interest in William and Mary and to help with fund-raising. The first meeting of the revived association took place in Richmond on October 10, 1888, and soon the group actively enlisted more members.^[117] The alumni held a banquet each year during commencement exercises. In 1903 Julian A. C. Chandler, president of the association, had the College secretary prepare a list of all students since the reopening in 1888, and he invited them to a special reunion during finals week. During these years Tyler and the faculty also tried to get alumni clubs established in various localities.^[118]

An event which interested alumni, students, and faculty alike was Jamestown Day on May 13, in “honor of the landing of the one hundred and five pioneers and pilgrims.” The first celebration in 1889 was a small affair for only the College community, which made a pilgrimage to Jamestown for the day. Two years later a more structured program included speakers—an orator, poet, and declaimer for the occasion. The outing in 1894 was similar and was but a preparation for the gala event the next year. The College joined forces with the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) for the daylong festivities, which included a prayer by Professor Wharton, the national hymn, an address by Professor Hall, a poem by Librarian Coleman, and a historical address by President Tyler, with music interspersed throughout. The next year the faculty declared each May 13 a general holiday,^[119] Jamestown Day reached its apex with the national Jamestown Exposition in 1907, commemorating the tercentennial of the first permanent English settlement in America. The College, along with other Virginia educational institutions, prepared an exhibit for the exposition.^[120]

Another celebration took place in 1893—the bicentennial of the granting of the College charter. A year earlier the Board of Visitors had appointed a committee to work with Tyler for an appropriate observance of the milestone. And it was an event worth celebrating—after all, many had often thought that the College would never survive its multitude of tribulations. A special day during commencement week was set apart, and on June 21 the College celebrated Bicentennial Day. The College librarian, Charles W. Coleman, read a poem that he had written, entitled “Alma Mater.” J. Allen Watts, an alumnus from Roanoke, delivered the principal address. On behalf of the Virginia Bar Association, Board member Robert M. Hughes presented a brass tablet in memory of George Wythe, the College’s first professor of law. The festivities ended with an alumni banquet that evening. Modest by modern standards, the bicentennial celebration had run $79 over its budget of $800. Later, Tyler compiled a special book containing the activities and orations of the day. It was printed on handmade paper, edged in gilt, and had a handsome white cloth cover.^[121]

The Campus

After the College had undergone years of retrenchment that culminated in the sale of much of its land and the decay of its buildings, Tyler quickly launched an ambitious campaign to improve and expand the physical facilities and to acquire more land. In 1888 the College owned seventeen acres—the main campus, a small amount across College Mill (Jamestown) Road, and the Palace Green property. It had five buildings: the Main Building, the President’s House, and the Brafferton on campus; the College Hotel across Jamestown Road; and the Mattey School on the Palace Green. Believing that a well-equipped, up-to-date campus would attract students, Tyler aggressively sought and obtained the Board’s approval for construction.^[122]

First came an infirmary to prevent epidemics and to care for the sick. Tyler proposed such a building in 1892 and estimated its cost at $1,400. The next year the Board appointed a committee to obtain plans for the infirmary and also for an additional College dormitory. Both would be built across Jamestown Road in a line with the existing College Hotel, which was renamed Ewell Hall after the president emeritus died in 1894. The two new buildings were finished that year, and the dormitory was named the Taliaferro Building, in honor of the president of the Board of Visitors.^[123]

Next, Tyler pressed for a gymnasium as a feature to put the College alongside the best normal schools in the country and to draw more students. He envisioned a brick building, seventy by thirty-five feet, costing $2,800. When the Board hesitated, Tyler successfully raised the necessary funds from private donors, but the estimate had by then risen to $5,300. Construction got under way, and the gymnasium rose between the Main Building and Jamestown Road. When it opened in 1901, the College touted it as “one of the finest in the South,” hired a “physical director,” and soon required normal students to take “physical culture.”^[124]

The last major building of the early twentieth century was the Science Hall. Tyler had long advocated such a building, and finally the Board authorized $14,000 for it. Plans were drawn and construction began to the northwest of the Main Building. Completed in late 1905, the well-equipped Science Hall housed lecture rooms, laboratories, and storage areas for the chemistry, physics, and biology departments. The Science Hall formally opened with great fanfare on April 27, 1906, with ceremonies attended by the governor, the superintendent of public instruction, and representatives of other state colleges, and featured Ira Remsen, president of Johns Hopkins, as the speaker.^[125] In addition to these four buildings, assorted outbuildings—stable, cow house, and barn—and a brick kitchen were built.^[126]

The College had struggled through the 1890s with inadequate sewer, water, heating, and lighting. Early in the twentieth century, the General Assembly appropriated $15,000 for heating, a water supply, and an electric light plant; then it provided another $10,500 for a sewer system and a new water tank. By 1906 the College had upgraded its utilities and had an artesian well water system, steam heat, and an electric light plant, located on the property across Jamestown Road. The new sewer system would soon be in place.^[127]

Another addition to the campus was not a building or a utility but a piece of military equipment. In 1901 local citizens and members of the faculty bought and presented to the College a cannon from Fort Christanna, which royal Governor Alexander Spotswood had built in 1713 on the Meherrin River on the southwestern frontier of Virginia. The fort was part of a defensive system guarding the colony against the Indians.^[128]  The College cannon then joined the statue of Lord Botetourt as sentinels on the grounds in front of the Main Building.

During this construction and upgrading at the College, Tyler also persuaded the Board of Visitors to acquire additional land as it became available. As early as 1890, Tyler had advocated renting Benjamin Long’s house and nine acres of property adjacent to the College Hotel across Jamestown Road, which the Board approved. When Long put the property on the market, the College acquired it in 1894 for $2,000.^[129] It also bought a lot west of the College Hotel from Millard F. Morris for $300 in 1893 and another lot in the same area from R. B. Slater for $350 ten years later. In addition to what came to be known as the south campus, fifteen acres directly west of the main campus and between Jamestown and Richmond roads were offered to the College, and Tyler urged their immediate purchase. The Board agreed, and in 1904 the College bought the land, known as the Bright tract, for $1,500.^[130]

The College sold land as well as bought it. Realizing that the excess marketable land east of the Matthew Whaley Model and Practice School had appreciated in value, Tyler urged its sale for building lots. In June 1900 the Board agreed and set the conditions for lot sizes. All lots had to face west, none could be sold to “colored” people, and proceeds from the sale would be put in the College’s endowment fund. The College sold six of the lots and bought Norfolk Silk Company bonds with the funds.^[131]

The Administration

Administering the College required only a small staff. In addition to the president, there was a steward, a librarian, and a treasurer, all elected annually by the Board of Visitors. With the assistance of several part-time officers, this administrative structure was sufficient to run a college of fewer than two hundred students.

The steward, under the president’s supervision, had the responsibility of running the College Hotel and its dining hall and later, the second dormitory. He had to be a married man, for his wife must perform matronly and housekeeping services. Throughout the early Tyler years, Robert L. Spencer filled the steward’s post. In 1901 his duties expanded to include the new role of superintendent of grounds and buildings. He was required to keep the enclosed property of the College, the boardinghouses, and the model school in order and to maintain the water and heating systems. He also organized and drilled employees to act as a fire department, if needed.^[132]

The duties of the librarian, set by the faculty, were not arduous. The library was located in a wing of the Main Building and contained about six thousand books and pamphlets. In 1891 the faculty decreed that the library must be open two hours a day, and this amount increased to five and a half hours by 1902. After employing several temporary librarians, the College named Charles W. Coleman, a local poet and scholar, to this post in 1893, but Coleman resigned five years later. In 1899 Blanche E. Moncure became the librarian and was the first woman administrative officer in the College’s history. After she left, Emily P. Christian assumed the post in 1902 and was the second woman officer at the College. Since Miss Christian could type, she also became secretary to the president and relieved him of some of the work of his correspondence.^[133]

If any administrative position required a careful and competent person, it was that of College treasurer. William and Mary was unfortunate in its first two choices for this vital position. On May 10, 1888, the Board elected William H. E. Morecock as treasurer and secretary to the Board. It directed him to keep accurate accounts and to report monthly to the Executive Committee and annually to the Board and to have all disbursement checks countersigned by the president of the College. Although the Board’s finance committee approved Morecock’s accounting a year later, it did not require him to show his bankbook. By October 1889 he had bounced checks countersigned by Tyler, who wrote, “He has got the [College] for $1,400!” The Board’s Executive Committee met in emergency session from October 10 to 12, 1889, and accepted Morecock’s resignation. That was not the end of the problem. Tyler demanded that Morecock surrender all vouchers, receipts, and other documentation, which Morecock refused to do. Morecock finally got his books straightened out in 1890.^[134]

The College’s next treasurer created problems of a different sort. In November 1889 the Executive Committee selected Henry B. Smith for the job. Smith was the brother-in-law of Robert M. Hughes, an alumnus and Norfolk attorney, who would serve on the Board from 1893 until 1918.^[135] Smith faithfully carried out his duties as treasurer and secretary to the Board, the Executive Committee, and the College. He kept careful, systematic accounts of the College’s money, and his reports always met with the Board’s approval. In the late 1890s, rumors began surfacing about Smith’s fondness for alcohol. As a precautionary measure, both the Board and its Executive Committee granted the faculty the power to suspend officers of the College and to fill any vacancies until the next Board meeting.^[136]

In May 1900 Smith disappeared from work for several days, and people saw him intoxicated on the street. The faculty warned him that a repetition of the offense would cost him his job. Hughes, now on the Board, reassured Tyler and the faculty that he would do nothing to save Smith if this behavior continued. Hughes was also concerned because Smith had the only key to the lockbox where College securities were kept.^[137] Smith could do nothing to save himself, however, and in June 1901 he went on another binge. The faculty immediately suspended him as College treasurer. The Board met a few days later and inexplicably, but perhaps in deference to Hughes, allowed Smith to continue his services on a probationary status.^[138] Needless to say, Smith could not control his drinking and resigned in January 1902. Robert L. Spencer, the steward, filled in as treasurer until the Board could elect a new man. In June the Visitors chose Levin Winder Lane, Jr., a Williamsburg alumnus, for the post. Tyler soon complained that Lane’s bookkeeping was inferior to Smith’s and that shortly after his arrival, Lane had, in a fit of cleanliness, burned bills, receipts, and Board papers for the last fourteen years. To keep a closer eye on the treasurer’s whereabouts, in 1903 the Board stipulated that the treasurer must maintain an office in the Main Building, which would open daily at nine in the morning for at least one hour.^[139]

William and Mary utilized several other officers to handle part-time responsibilities. In 1891 the College engaged Dr. Charles W. Coleman of Williamsburg as College physician. After Coleman’s death in 1895, the Board established the office of College physician, and Dr. George A. Hankins filled the position for years. In 1902 Emily P. Christian, the librarian, also became College secretary, and W. J. King was named physical officer until he was replaced by J. M. Blanchard in 1905. In 1904 the librarian’s duties were divided, and Mary A. (Pattie) Morecock took the job of secretary to the president. To help administer the academic program, the Board instructed Tyler to name a dean of the faculty. Tyler selected the English professor, J. Lesslie Hall, for the position.^[140]

The Board of Visitors

The reorganization of 1888 had created two Boards of Visitors—the old Charter Board and the governor-appointed new Board of Associate Visitors. Although the act of 1888 was clear about the Board’s duties of controlling funds, making rules, and hiring College officers and professors, it said nothing about the organization of the governing body, the ultimate authority within the Board, or the overlapping membership of the two groups. Consequently, from 1888 until 1906, there was a rector of the Old Board and a president of the New Board. Sometimes it was the same man. In 1888 Judge William W. Crump was rector of the Old Board. When the full twenty-member Board convened, it elected him president. Crump resigned in 1890, and General William B. Taliaferro, a member of the Old Board, became president, and governor-appointed James N. Stubbs became vice-president, a post he would hold until 1918. Taliaferro died in 1898, and the Board elected Dr. John W. Lawson as president. He served until his death in 1905. When the Old Board met again in 1892, it had to elect a rector and one new member. It named Colonel William Lamb, the senior member, as rector and chose Colonel John B. Cary as a member. The Old Board continued to meet in conjunction with regular Board meetings. Its only independent function appears to have been replacing members who died or resigned.^[141]

Uncertainty about who had the power to appoint new Associate Visitors—the governor or the Associates themselves—fueled the confusion. In 1893 the governor selected Robert M. Hughes to fill a vacancy. Three years later the Associate Visitors held that it was the sense of the Board’s Associates that they should fill their own vacancies, so, to dispel any doubts, they also elected Hughes. The Associates followed the same procedure with each gubernatorial appointee.^[142] By 1906 the two Boards, each electing its own members and then meeting and acting as one body, seemed unnecessarily large and unwieldy.

The Board’s relationships with the faculty, which had caused considerable dissention in earlier years, were amicable and minimal. The faculty was no longer a corporate body controlling property or College funds, but three incidents demonstrated the uncertainty about its diminished authority. The cases involved property acquired before 1888. During the dispute between the College and the Williamsburg School Board over the Matthew Whaley School property, the school board, in 1892, had sued the faculty as a corporate body for possession of the Mattey Fund, which was invested in the schoolhouse and lands. The faculty promptly authorized Tyler to file suit for unlawful possession. Afterwards, the Board took over the matter.^[143] When the building lots near the school were sold in 1900, Tyler asked the faculty for its approval, which it gave.^[144]

The third case was more complex. In 1830 Thomas Jefferson’s grandson had deeded to the College his thirteen-hundred-acre Shadwell estate in Albemarle County to secure a loan. The acreage was reduced to 836 in 1869.^[145] In 1879 President Ewell had sold the land in three separate parcels, but apparently the faculty had not empowered him to act, as was customary at the time. Later, the purchaser of one tract, the Reverend R. T. Davis, was extremely ill and had sold his parcel. The buyer, S. A. Branch, thought that the title was not clear without a resolution from the faculty authorizing Ewell’s 1879 sale. A series of letters in 1892 from Davis’s brother, Eugene, to Tyler, the faculty, and the president of the Board finally resulted in a faculty resolution on July 1 authorizing the president to guarantee the validity of the earlier sales. The Board’s Executive Committee then approved the faculty’s action. Not only did the faculty have to approve land sales, but the purchase of land required their assent as well. All deeds of purchase recorded in the City of Williamsburg or James City County deed books were drawn between the seller and the president and masters or professors of the College of William and Mary. The confusion about powers and duties resulting from the act of 1888 persisted.^[146]

Other than in property matters, contacts between faculty and Board members were few. In 1889 the faculty decided that it was “not expedient” for the College, under the new regime, to resume awarding honorary degrees. The Board concurred. As the College regained some measure of academic credibility, the faculty reconsidered and in 1896 decided that the time was right. Three years later the Board agreed but limited the honorary degrees to the doctor of law for eminence in literary or educational work. The faculty would nominate recipients, the Board confer the degrees. In 1900 the faculty recommended two candidates for the doctor of law degree—Alexander Brown and William Wirt Henry—and the Board approved. The next year, however, the Board rejected the two faculty nominees and awarded no honorary degrees.^[147] The only other contacts between the faculty and the Board appear to have been social. Several times the faculty declared that it would be happy to pay its respects, en masse, to the Board, and the Visitors received the callers.^[148]

The Board’s dealings with the president, however, took a different twist. Replacing the hostility between the Board and the faculty that had been prevalent in earlier times was the growing animosity between some Visitors and the College president. This trend, which began with Tyler, would resurface with most twentieth century presidents and their Boards. In Tyler’s case the difficulty sprang from a real personality conflict, which reached the level of open warfare at times, with Robert Morton Hughes, a Visitor from 1893, and rector from 1905 until 1918.

When Tyler became president, some Board members wondered about his financial and business abilities. Even one of the faculty discerned pervasive dissatisfaction with him and believed that he would be quickly replaced.^[149] But generally, Tyler seemed to have worked well with most of his Board (with the exception of Hughes) and kept them informed of events and the needs of the College by frequent letters, personal contact, and detailed reports.^[150] He took in stride Colonel Lamb, who had been a Visitor since 1867 and who showed no hesitation about directing Tyler’s actions: put a furnace in the library; have three elms and the pear tree cut down; get estimates on leveling work; reserve the library for a Phi Beta Kappa meeting and tell the faculty to be there at 11:30 a.m. The suggestions were endless, but Tyler took the paternalistic supervision good-naturedly.^[151]

Hughes, too, barraged the president with advice, but he demonstrated even less tact than Lamb. Shortly after his appointment by the governor in 1893, he wrote Tyler that people had told him he had been put on the Board to check on the president. Puzzled, Tyler replied that he could not see why it was necessary to put a check on him.^[152] After this inauspicious beginning, the relationship between the two steadily deteriorated. Hughes readily plied Tyler with suggestions on College business—raising money, advertising, changing the organization of Phi Beta Kappa—and even advised on the style of light fixtures to be used in the President’s House.^[153]

The two men really tangled in 1904 when Hughes, without consulting the women involved, got the Board to approve the forming of a guild, composed of faculty wives and Mrs. Tyler, to care for the various College artifacts. A strong-willed lady, Annie Tyler took offense and did not hesitate to tell Hughes so. Surprised, Hughes replied that he had thought the ladies would consider it a “labor of love.” He then wrote to L. W. Lane, Jr., secretary of the Board and College treasurer, that his idea had been to organize a sacristy guild for the College such as churches have.^[154] Tyler jumped on Hughes for writing to Lane rather than to Lawson, the president of the Board. Hughes returned the fire: “The supervisory power of the president of the College … does not include the officers or members of the Board.” After more skirmishing, the matter died.^[155]

At the same Board meeting that attempted to set up the ladies’ guild, the Visitors curtailed another presidential perquisite. Tyler had, with impunity, allowed his horse and cow free run of the College grounds. The cow had wandered into the cellar of the Main Building to escape the summer heat, and complaints reached the Board about the unsanitary conditions of the campus. At Hughes’s instigation, and again without consulting Tyler, the Board decreed that all livestock would be tethered on the back part of the campus. Tyler complained bitterly to Lawson about this and other incidents of Hughes’s acting without consulting the president, but Lawson suggested that Tyler comply with the resolution. There would be no more cows on the campus. A few months later, the Executive Committee came to the rescue and allowed the president to graze his horse and cow on land in back of the dormitories on Jamestown Road.^[156]

The “cow” resolution came as the last straw for Tyler, as he struggled to curtail Hughes’s interference and sidestepping of presidential authority. Since the powers of the president of William and Mary had never been fully defined, Tyler decided to ask the Board what his were. In April and May 1905, he queried the presidents of at least eleven colleges and universities about their duties and authority.^[157] Armed with the knowledge that these men had wide powers, were ex officio members of board committees, and brought all matters before the governing body, Tyler complained to Hughes that he was “nothing more than chairman of the faculty.” He wanted the Board to define his powers. In March 1905 the Board appointed a committee with Colonel Lamb as chairman for this purpose.^[158]

When the committee reported at the June meeting, the Board adopted its recommendations on the duties of the president. He was the means of communication between the Board and the College community. He was an ex officio member of the Board and was to report regularly to it, and he was an ex officio member, with voting power, of all standing committees of the Board. He was to represent the College to the public, preside at all public occasions, and award all degrees except honorary ones. He had superintendency over all College property and had to approve bills and countersign checks and prepare budgets. He was to matriculate all students and keep records of them. He had general oversight of the faculty and was to preside at their meetings. He must appoint one of the faculty as dean to act in his absence.^[159] Tyler finally had clear guidelines as to his powers; perhaps there would be fewer disputes with Hughes.

At the same meeting in June 1905, the Board voted for a new president to replace Lawson, who had died in February. A hotly contested election resulted in a tie vote between Armistead C. Gordon and Hughes. Tyler had actively supported Gordon by writing or interviewing Board members and arguing convincingly for his candidate. Furious at the presidential intervention, Hughes abruptly resigned from the committee on the College endowment, of which Tyler was chairman. He refused to serve on any committee with the president.^[160] Writing to other Board members, Hughes attributed Tyler’s hostility to the “cow” resolution, but the basic issue was, he said, whether the Board was an independent body or a puppet of the president.^[161] Gordon lamented the division in the Board and declined to allow his name to be presented for the top office. With no further opposition, Hughes was elected president of the Board in October 1905.^[162] Now many wondered if Hughes and Tyler could settle their differences for the good of the College.

Financial Problems—As Always

Throughout its history, William and Mary had anxiously searched for funds and fought off insolvency. This trend continued under Tyler. When he became president, the endowment was $20,000, and debts amounted to $7,679.^[163] Few individuals or organizations considered helping the moribund institution, but Tyler began reversing this sad state of affairs.

A vital task was to collect money owed to the College. The first target, the longstanding Mayo debt, totaling $13,432 in principal and interest, had been incurred by William C. Mayo in 1876. It had been due five years later, but Mayo was unable to pay it.^[164] In October 1888 the Executive Committee voted to retain an attorney to prosecute the College’s claim. The following August the Visitors agreed to sell the debt for $10,000 to John S. Wise, who had originally secured the loan while bursar of the College. When the College received the money, it paid off various debts and spent some on repairs to buildings. There was $804.52 left.^[165]

Of far greater significance for the College was its claim against the federal government for damages to the Main Building, sustained during the Civil War. Beginning in 1870 Ewell had mounted intensive campaigns to secure reparations, but all were unsuccessful.^[166] As the College prepared to reopen during the summer of 1888, the Board named a committee to memorialize Congress and to try once again to obtain $64,000 for wartime losses. Several committee members appealed to House members for support, and in August 1890 the Committee on War Claims reported favorably on a bill to aid the College, but the measure did not pass.^[167] At the same time, the Board’s Executive Committee hired Major Henry Churchill Semple of Alabama as agent and counsel to prosecute the claim. Semple would receive an unspecified amount of compensation only if he succeeded. Semple was optimistic about the bill’s eventual passage.^[168] In late 1890 Semple urged Ewell to come to the capital, but Ewell declined, fearing he did not have a suitable wardrobe. Tyler sent Ewell to a tailor, at College expense, “to rig the Colonel out.” Ewell then went to Washington and renewed his contacts with old supporters of the College.^[169]

In April 1892 Tyler made the same trip to stir up interest among the Virginia representatives. Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, who had championed the College’s claim during the 1870s, wrote Tyler that he would do everything in his power “for the passage of the bill securing indemnity.” That same month the Senate approved the measure, as did the House Committee on War Claims, which sent it to the Committee of the Whole House. Although pleased with the bill’s progress, Semple correctly predicted that it would not clear both houses during the session.^[170]

Early in 1893 Semple summoned Tyler and Board member D. Gardiner Tyler to the capital, and Taliaferro later joined them. Action in the House on the College bill could come at any time. Speaker Charles F. Crisp deftly maneuvered the measure through the House, aided by solid Virginia and Alabama delegations, and on March 1, 1893, the House passed An Act for the Relief of William and Mary College, of Virginia. The final vote was 195 yeas, 37 nays, 97 abstentions. The act authorized $64,000 for the College for “the destruction of its buildings and other property without authority by soldiers of the United States during the late war.”^[171] Colonel Lamb telegraphed to his friend President Benjamin Harrison, urging his prompt signing of the bill for relief of “Virginia’s Alma Mater so historically associated with his ancestry,” and one of Harrison’s last official acts as president was to sign the bill on March 3.^[172] After so many years, the College’s victory was sweet indeed. It was a splendid gift for the bicentennial year of the nation’s second oldest college.

All that remained was to get the long-awaited funds, and the Board directed the treasurer, Henry B. Smith, to collect them. At its April meeting, the Board authorized $1,200 for Ewell and $6,400 for its agent, Semple. Two months later, it designated $45,200 to be invested in Virginia Century bonds and added to the College’s endowment. Eventually, the rest of the money was applied to the construction costs of the infirmary and the Taliaferro dormitory.^[173]

Probably the man happiest about the favorable congressional action was Benjamin Ewell. The president emeritus was eighty-three years old when the College finally received its indemnity. He had tried for so long to achieve this goal, and now in his twilight years, it had become reality. With his mission accomplished, Ewell died on June 19, 1894. Faculty, students, the Board of Visitors, townspeople, and Confederate veterans paid their last respects as the kindly old president was buried in the College Cemetery.^[174]

The only discordant note in the otherwise happy outcome of the belated federal indemnification of the College was Semple’s strenuous objection to his commission. At the Board meeting in April, there was a dispute about how much to pay. After two votes the Visitors agreed to 10 percent ($6,400), although the majority of the Executive Committee members allegedly wanted to give Semple $10,000. Hearing of this, Semple argued that his contract had been with the Executive Committee, and if the College did not pay the difference between the two amounts, he would sue. In October the Executive Committee resolved that $6,400 was enough, and no lawsuit developed.^[175]

An interesting sidelight of the war claims struggle was a spate of letters to Tyler disputing the contention that the Main Building burned because of Northern vandalism. E. P. McKinney, who had been a young lieutenant with the Sixth New York Cavalry at Yorktown, was ordered to inspect Williamsburg the day before the attack by Union forces on September 11, 1862. When he reached the city, he found the College in ruins and still smoking. After the Union attack, McKinney spent several days in the city and talked with numerous inhabitants, all of whom said the fire had been an accident. He suggested that the federal award was not a reparation “but rather a graceful recognition of the claim of the second oldest college in the land on the generosity of the Nation.”^[176]

In addition to the federal appropriation, William and Mary received a variety of gifts—either cash, books or artifacts—from numerous sources. Items such as the ancient sundial, the map of the Brafferton Estate in England, and the coffin plate of Lord Botetourt, who was buried in the chapel, were all returned to the College. There were new artifacts such as a collection of minerals given in 1889, the George Wythe tablet in 1893, the Colonial Dames tablet in 1901, and in 1903 a carpet for the library and a set of electrotypes which were facsimiles of Sir Walter Raleigh’s seal. By early in the new century, the portrait collection had grown from six to thirty-two; books, including a rare set of the Chronicles of England, from five thousand to over ten thousand. In 1888 Earle Walter Blodgett contributed ten gold medals, one to be awarded annually for excellence in pedagogics, and known as the Brafferton Prize. He soon gave silver medals for second place. In 1893 Blodgett provided two more medals, called the B. S. Ewell Mathematical Prize, to be given each year. Board member Robert M. Hughes established two scholarships in 1897—the Pi Kappa Alpha and the James Barron Hope scholarships.^[177] In addition to all these gifts, several small monetary donations came in: $3,000 from Blodgett’s estate in 1901, and $1,000 from Kate Cabell Claiborne for a collection of Virginia books for the library.^[178]

Tyler devoted much energy to fund-raising for the badly needed new gymnasium, which had to be financed largely with private funds. The Board allowed him leaves of absence to travel “up North” (ostensibly where the money was) for the purpose. Starting with a pledge in 1896 of $1,000 by Richard Y. Cook of Philadelphia, Tyler almost single-handedly raised $6,000 in private funds by the fall of 1905 for the new building and its equipment.^[179]

The president soon fixed his sights on larger game: the philanthropic giveaways of the early Progressive era. Although the Board of Visitors had established in 1903 a committee to raise money for the endowment, buildings, and equipment, Tyler himself actively pursued the large foundations. He made many trips “up North” and corresponded with representatives of the Peabody Board of Trust and the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations.^[180] The Board of Visitors must have thought that Tyler was overextending his energies and capabilities, for in March 1905 William C. L. Taliaferro, the son of General Taliaferro, who was named to the Board in 1903, took over the negotiations with the Peabody representatives. After an angry exchange of letters with Taliaferro, Tyler concluded that if he had further communication, it would be with Lawson, the president of the Board.^[181]

Tyler then directed his fund-raising efforts toward the Carnegie Foundation. He asked for $25,000 for a new library and $100,000 for the endowment fund. Tyler quickly had to fight off President Edwin A. Alderman of the University of Virginia, who attempted to undercut William and Mary by telling Carnegie that Williamsburg was too unhealthy and that he wanted to move the College to Charlottesville and annex it to the university. The university itself had established a School of Education in 1905 and was also searching for foundation funds.^[182] Tyler refuted the charges and produced certificates from medical officials verifying the healthfulness of Williamsburg and the Peninsula. Carnegie accepted Tyler’s arguments and in April 1905 awarded William and Mary $20,000 for a new library, if the College could raise matching funds as an endowment for the library.^[183] Typically, Board member Hughes deflated the exultant Tyler when he wrote that he did not think the College could accept the gift because it could never raise the necessary matching funds.^[184]

But raise the money Tyler did. With his usual energy, he garnered contributions for the library endowment. The largest gift came from George C. Batcheller, a wealthy New York corset manufacturer, who donated $10,000, on the condition the College establish the Batcheller Library Endowment and use its income for maintenance and enlargement of the building. The College agreed—and also awarded him an honorary degree in 1907.^[185] Other significant donors were Joseph Bryan of Richmond, R. Fulton Cutting of New York, and Thomas Nelson Page. By June 1906 Tyler had raised the requisite $20,000, and plans were begun to construct a new library.^[186]

Although acquiring the Carnegie award for the new library and raising matching funds were notable successes, the College received no other foundation grants during this time. In 1905 Tyler had asked for $150,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation, but nothing came of it. Similarly, an appeal to Robert C. Ogden drew a negative response.^[187] Ironically, the Board of Visitors had no better luck, even after removing from Tyler all fund-raising duties except securing the Carnegie money.

Nevertheless, as a result of Tyler’s enterprising efforts, the College’s endowment had reached $132,328 by 1906, up from the $20,000 of 1888.^[188] It is difficult to understand why Tyler received so much criticism for lacking fund-raising abilities or for inept financial management when he was largely responsible for the College’s improved condition. There is no indication in the records of his handling funds poorly. To the contrary, in 1901, when the state reduced the interest rate to 3 percent on state bonds held by educational institutions, Tyler sought professional advice on changing the College’s investments to produce more income. The College held $90,000 in Virginia Century bonds, and the Board took Tyler’s advice and authorized selling them in January 1903. More than two years later, the College still held $60,000 in these low-yielding securities. Tyler prodded the Board again, and in July the finance committee sold the bonds and invested in a loan, secured by a deed of trust on the Atlantic Trust and Deposit Company building, which paid 4.5 percent.^[189]

The bulk of the College’s funds came, of course, from the state of Virginia, but problems arose that sometimes threatened the College’s very existence. Even the first appropriation of $10,000, made in 1888, was not forthcoming in its entirety. When the College treasurer tried to draw the funds, the state auditor refused to pay more than $5,694, dating the annuity from March 5, when the act was effective, to the end of the fiscal year on October 1.^[190] Tyler tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the General Assembly to increase the funding to $12,000 in 1890. He had better luck two years later when the College’s appropriation rose to $15,000 annually. While the finance committees of both houses were considering money bills, Tyler was always active among the legislators, either in person or by letter.^[191] But slowly opposition from denominational colleges and state institutions in the western part of Virginia mounted. Why should William and Mary, a private college, receive state money? they asked. In 1896 there was a flurry of apprehension when a movement developed in the General Assembly to reduce the funding, but the College’s friends warded off the measure.^[192]

A far greater threat to William and Mary and to all state institutions grew out of the Retrenchment and Reform movement in the late 1890s. A part of the conservative Democratic campaign to reclaim political, fiscal, and social control of Virginia, the movement aimed at reducing expenses, including educational, to ensure the state’s solvency.^[193] Characteristic of this general trend, a joint resolution came before the Committee on Finance of the House of Delegates in early February 1898. The resolution proposed limiting the appropriations for the University of Virginia to $40,000 (down from $50,000) and for the Virginia Military Institute to $25,000 (down from $30,000); omitting the $5,000 for the Medical College of Virginia; and amending the act of 1888 establishing the normal school at William and Mary and cutting its funding to $7,500 (from $15,000).^[194]

Horrified at the prospect of the College’s losing half of its yearly appropriation and, in effect, bringing about its closing, Tyler launched perhaps the largest public relations campaign in the College’s history. He prepared a pamphlet, “William and Mary College,” and distributed it widely across the state to legislators, alumni, school superintendents, newspaper editors, and friends of the College, asking them to appeal to the General Assembly. Responses poured in, supporting the College in her hour of need and castigating the General Assembly: “Wildest body of men I ever saw,” wrote one; “Virginia cannot afford to hurt her schools,” said another. “The closing of William and Mary would be a National Calamity … how low our poor old state will have fallen when she can let a venerable Institution like this go down,” wrote still another. Surprised at the attack on the College, one supporter expressed “the utmost indignation of the course pursued toward our Tidewater Country.”^[195]

The Board of Visitors Executive Committee sent a resolution to both branches of the General Assembly, urging them not to reduce William and Mary’s appropriation. Such a move would “seriously cripple the usefulness of the College” whose graduates have “increased efficiency in the public schools”^[196] The Committee for Schools and Colleges of the House of Delegates visited the campus on February 18 and reported that William and Mary was one of the highest grade normal schools in the nation and the only one for white males in Virginia. The state’s appropriations were “well and wisely bestowed” there. The delegates voted not to approve the Joint Committee’s resolution reducing the funding of William and Mary and the other public colleges. Appropriations remained at the 1896 level.^[197] At least the state’s colleges and universities had been spared the reforming zeal of the legislature.

Tyler could breathe a sigh of relief at the College’s averting such a misfortune. The financial situation even brightened in 1900, when the General Assembly awarded $15,000 for the College’s annual appropriation and, for the first time, another $10,000 for physical improvements. There had been objections in the Finance Committee of Virginia’s upper house to the extra $10,000 because the state did not own the buildings, but the measure carried by a narrow five to four majority. With the additional funds, the College could award contracts for sinking an artesian well, building a water tower and tank, and heating several buildings.^[198]

Any sense of well-being was short-lived, however. In June 1901 delegates assembled in a convention to prepare a new state constitution, the first since the Underwood Constitution of 1869, which had been a product of Reconstruction. Fortunately for William and Mary, John Goode, the president of the convention, and four current Board of Visitors members were delegates and alumni. The College would need all her friends in the months that followed.^[199]

When the Committee on Education and Public Instruction reported on November 13, two sections pertaining to William and Mary came under fire. Anticipating trouble, Tyler and Board members had urged friends of the College to conduct a letter-writing blitz, as they had in 1898.^[200] First came an attempt to exclude the College from receiving public funding because it was not owned by the state. During the summer of 1901, two resolutions introduced by W. F. Dunaway, the delegate from Lancaster County and Richmond, increased apprehensions. The first would forbid public funds for any church or sectarian society; the second, for any charitable, industrial, or educational institution not owned or controlled by the state. Simultaneously, rumors were deliberately circulated that William and Mary was run by the Episcopal church, which allegedly owned its property.^[201] But the College’s friends in and out of the convention gained Dunaway’s agreement to omit the section on educational institutions from the final draft, which was approved in October. Dunaway also exempted William and Mary from the prohibition against funding institutions that were not state owned.^[202]

The second measure affecting the College was the composition of the revamped State Board of Education. In November the Committee on Education and Public Instruction recommended that the board consist of the governor; the attorney general; the chairman of the faculty at the University of Virginia; the presidents of William and Mary, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and the Female Normal School at Farmville; and the superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute. The delegates fought for months on this issue.^[203]

The president of William and Mary had an enemy who was determined that Tyler would not serve on the Board of Education or hold any office. On November 20, 1901, the Reverend William T. Roberts, rector of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, wrote an open letter to John Goode, president of the constitutional convention. In his irrational eight-page letter, Roberts criticized the Committee on Education’s report for recommending aid for William and Mary, which was not owned and controlled by the state, and for making a place for its president on the State Board of Education. Tyler should not be on it, he argued, because he had a daughter at Wellesley College, as did Booker T. Washington. It was “criminal” for Tyler’s daughter to attend classes and sit at the dinner table with Washington’s daughter, “which she does with the knowledge and consent of her father.” He wondered how the convention could vote for a Board of Education member who sanctioned mixed schools, social equality, and miscegenation. Roberts’s next target was James N. Stubbs, vice-president of the Board of Visitors and delegate to the General Assembly. Stubbs was, charged Roberts, a suspected bribe-taker and inveterate gambler, a veritable “moral leper … Ugh! He is a stench in the nostrils of all decent people.”^[204]

Stunned, Tyler wrote to the vestry of Bruton Parish that Roberts’s violent assault stemmed, in part, from the fact that he had been soliciting for a place on the College’s Board of Visitors and realized that Tyler did not think such an appointment would be in the College’s best interest. His letter was especially dangerous, wrote Tyler, because by signing it as Bruton’s rector, he committed the whole church to his sentiments.^[205] The vestry immediately demanded that Roberts withdraw the letter, signed as rector, which he agreed to do, but he reiterated the charges as an individual. Several months later the vestry passed a formal resolution disavowing Roberts’s actions.^[206]

Many sprang to Tyler’s defense. At a special meeting on November 30, the faculty passed a resolution confined to denouncing Roberts and to refuting the social equality and miscegenation charges that he had leveled against Tyler: “No man in Virginia is further removed from such views.” That same day thirty-six students sent a petition to the vestry deploring Roberts’s attack against the College and added that his “uninviting manner” made it impossible for Episcopal students to attend Bruton. They called for his removal. Similarly, the Williamsburg city council repudiated Roberts’s actions.^[207] The Board met in special session on December 11 and passed a dignified resolution denying the charges Roberts had made against Tyler and his administration of the College and fully supporting the president.^[208]

Meanwhile, Tyler had sent a letter to the editor of the Richmond Times, explaining that his daughter, now in her second year at Wellesley College, had been able to attend the Massachusetts school through the generosity of a cousin, who was on the board of trustees. Booker T. Washington’s daughter was the only black among seven hundred students, and she did not mingle with the white girls. In denying Roberts’s allegations of his favoring racial mixing, Tyler wrote, “I am a Southern man with Southern feelings and traditions.”^[209]

As the war in words continued, the constitutional convention finally adopted a measure for the composition of the State Board of Education. It would be composed of the governor, the attorney general, the superintendent of public instruction (an educator elected by popular vote), and three educators chosen from six state educational institutions. It seems unlikely that the Roberts affair had any bearing on the delegates’ drive to put the Board of Education under the control of professional educators rather than politicians.^[210] Tyler was elected in 1903 and served for four years on this board.

After William and Mary had fought for its life during the constitutional convention, it fared better with the General Assembly. In 1902 the appropriation remained $15,000, but the assembly granted another $5,000 for an electric light plant. Two years later Tyler pressed for an increase in the appropriation, which had been the same since 1892. “I have never believed in the policy of standing back and waiting for fortune to come to the College,” he told the Board, which then agreed to ask the legislature for more. William and Mary’s appropriation rose to $25,000. Board member Hughes wrote Tyler, “You are entitled to [most], if not the entire, credit for having brought this about.” In 1906 Tyler asked the General Assembly for another $10,000, bringing the annual appropriation to $35,000, and the assembly complied.^[211] Because of Tyler’s active leadership, the College’s funding from the state had increased from $10,000 to $35,000 a year.

Becoming a State College

The years of trying to keep William and Mary afloat and of fighting off its opponents took their toll on Tyler. Soon after the constitutional convention of 1901–1902, he began seeking an end to the uncertainty by proposing the only viable alternative: turning the College over to the state of Virginia. Neither wholly private nor wholly public, William and Mary had a “peculiar relation” to the state, said Tyler. It was “neither fish, flesh, nor fowl.”^[212]

As early as 1902, one professor urged upon Tyler what he surely had been thinking. “We must before long give ourselves to the state.”^[213] Mustering support among the Visitors, Tyler argued for such a transfer at a special Board meeting in April 1904.^[214] He met and countered three major objections. First, there was a sentimental attachment to the royal charter, which, Tyler said, had been suspended since the act of 1888 anyway. Under the charter monetary matters had been vested in the faculty, but since 1888 the Board had had this responsibility. The Board itself, half of which was self-perpetuating and the other half state-appointed, should be like those of other state institutions: appointed by the governor for a set term. The second objection centered around the fear that the College’s becoming public would discourage private donations to the endowment fund. Tyler pointed out that William and Mary had only raised a few thousand dollars during two centuries, while the University of Virginia, always a state institution, had acquired a large endowment fund. The third deterrent was a belief that the Board had no authority to change the charter. But, said Tyler, the Visitors had already changed it by the act of 1888. If it was lawful then, it was lawful now.^[215]

On the other hand, the advantages of state ownership were manifold. A transfer would end the uncertainty that had plagued the College as to whether its appropriation would continue. Such uncertainty had an adverse effect on the faculty and all those connected with the College. State ownership would increase attendance because students are less apt to attend a college with a tenuous existence. The General Assembly, which had provided and increased the College’s operating budget, would be more inclined to fund buildings and equipment. The Board responded to Tyler’s eloquent arguments by passing a resolution that the College should be transferred to the state and by appointing a committee to effect the transfer. When the Board convened again in June 1904, it adopted, with only Colonel Lamb voting in the negative, a draft transfer bill to send to the General Assembly. An added impetus came the next year when the University of Virginia established a chair of Education, which would directly compete with William and Mary’s mission of training male teachers. In October 1905 the Board made a few changes in the draft and appointed a committee of Tyler, Hughes, and five additional Visitors to present the bill to the upcoming session of the legislature.^[216] The importance of the royal charter was downplayed. It had been practically dead for centuries, wrote one Board member. “’Twas a royal Charter, sure, and it should be framed and put among the Virginia curiosities at the Jamestown Exposition.”^[217]

When the General Assembly convened in January 1906, Tyler and various faculty and Board members fought off objections to the bill, primarily that it would put William and Mary into direct competition with other state colleges. The College had already been in such a competition with them since the founding of the younger institutions, they countered. It was to the state’s advantage to accept William and Mary’s offer of providing a normal school for men with a collegiate course attached rather than to establish a new college for male teachers.^[218]

The General Assembly approved the transfer act, and Governor Claude A. Swanson, known as the “education governor,” signed it into law on March 7. The act was a part of sweeping educational legislation to upgrade the state’s colleges and high schools during his administration. As required by the act, the faculty passed a resolution approving its provisions. The Board held a special meeting on the ninth to consider the transfer and voted unanimously to accept it.^[219]

The new law amended and reenacted the act of 1888 establishing a normal school at William and Mary to train white male teachers for the state’s public schools. All real estate and personal property existing in the name of the corporate body known as the President and Masters or Professors of the College would be placed under control of a Board of Visitors in a new corporate body known as the College of William and Mary in Virginia and become the property of the state of Virginia. The newly constituted Board of Visitors would have ten members, appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate of Virginia, who would hold office for four years. The superintendent of public instruction was an ex officio member. The Board would control and spend the College’s funds, make rules and regulations, have full appointive powers for the president, professors, and staff, and confer degrees. The Board also would prescribe admissions requirements for normal students and extract a pledge from them to teach for two years in the state’s public schools in exchange for tuition-free training. Each county and city was entitled to one student and also additional ones, depending on their representation in the House of Delegates.^[220]

Finally, it was done. The College seemed safe at last under the protective wing of the state. “The truth is,” Tyler later said, “the struggle up to 1906 was for permission to live.”^[221] Tyler had been largely responsible for raising the old College from a condition of utter ruin and prostration to a success unmatched in its long history The time had come, Tyler told the Board of Visitors, “when the Institution, like the Phoenix of old, risen from its ashes, was arrayed in plumage more attractive than it ever before possessed.”^[222] William and Mary was ready to begin a new chapter in its educational trek.

Unless otherwise indicated, all material is from WMA.