13 May 1776 A.D. LEXINGTON, VA: 9th oldest educational institution in U.S.—Liberty Hall Academy later becomes Washington & Lee
13 May 1776 A.D. LEXINGTON, VA: 9th
oldest educational institution in U.S.—Liberty Hall Academy later becomes
Washington & Lee
Editors. “May 13: Liberty Hall
Academy.” This Day in Presbyterian
History. 13 May 2015. http://www.thisday.pcahistory.org/2015/05/may-13-liberty-hall-academy-2/.
Accessed 13 May 2015.
May 13: Liberty Hall Academy
Ninth
Oldest Educational Institution in the Nation
The
history and tradition page on the college’s web site is very thorough about the
various changes which have come in the time the educational school has been in
existence. Our readers know it as Washington and Lee University, in
Lexington, Virginia. The latter part of its name was added in 1870 when
General Robert E. Lee, late of the Confederacy, died as its president in that
year. Before that from 1813 and 1796, it was simply known as Washington
College and Washington Academy. The father of our country had come in a
time of financial struggle to give a grant of 20,000 shares of James River
Canal stock. And so in honor of him, they gave his name to the
school. Before that still, it was named on May 13, 1776, as Liberty Hall Academy in
that same location. Ruins from that school are still to be found on a hill
looking over the area. Originally, it was called from 1749, Augusta
Academy, so named after the county in which it found itself in Virginia.
Yet
missing from this whole description of the founding and re-naming of the
educational institution is that the Presbyterians of Virginia had begun this
school. As early as 1771, the Hanover Presbytery expressed its intention
to begin a seminary of learning within the boundary of the Presbytery. Its
early leaders, supporters, and faculty were all Presbyterians from the
Shenandoah Valley. And its purpose was to give a religious and moral
education to the students who would come to study under its oversight. It
is true that they did not desire to make Presbyterians of all who came there,
but the denominational basis of the school was clearly known by all who were to
attend. Its board members were all Presbyterian ministers and members of
the Presbyterian churches in the valley. Its first president was the
celebrated Presbyterian minister William Graham, who studied under John
Witherspoon at the College of New Jersey.
It
was said that Liberty Hall Academy owed its foundation, first, to the pious
zeal of Presbyterian clergy, second, to the contributions of the
Presbyterian people of the valley, third, to the energy and talents of
Presbyterian minister and leader, Rev. William Graham, and last, to the
attention by the Presbyterian trustees and gratuitous aid of members of the
Presbyterian churches of said valley. Yet it is all this which
is missing on the present history and traditions page of the University
on-line.
Words
to Live By: A Christian man and
woman this writer knows has taken remarkable incidents out of their lives
when God has been powerfully present and accounted for in those lives, and
remembered them by marked stones in a dish. It is a reminder that we are
too apt to forget what God has accomplished in the past. That is why a
key word in Scripture is the word “remember.” Let us remember God’s
dealings in our lives, and in the lives of our institutions.
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