The Lee Free School and the College of William and Mary

HE history of the College of William and Mary can never be written in the full form its achievements deserve. The collection of archives of the college in its library has many gaps, a tragic circumstance in Virginia's historiography. The minutes of the Board of Visitors in sequence do not begin until July 4, i86o; from that date they are complete. Minutes survive of only a few meetings of the Board in the long and important period from the founding of the college in i693 to i86o. The minute book of the faculty covering the period from June 4, I784 to July I2, i8I7, if it exists, has not been located. No matriculation book before i827 has survived.' Nor does the college library have the administrative correspondence of the presidents of the college before the period of Colonel Benjamin S. Ewell, who succeeded President John Johns in i854

Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture