Part 1 (2/2)

The State of Virginia, in 1780--when ”Kan-tuck-ee” or ”Kentuckee,” as this country was then called, was only a little-explored portion of that State--placed eight thousand acres of escheated lands within that county into the hands of thirteen trustees ”for the purposes of a public school or _seminary of learning_,” that they ”might at a future day be a valuable fund for the maintenance and education of youth; it being the interest of this Commonwealth always to promote and encourage every design which might tend to the improvement of the mind and the diffusion of knowledge, even amongst the most remote citizens, whose situation a barbarous neighborhood and a savage intercourse might otherwise render unfriendly to science.”

Three years thereafter (1783), when Kentucky had become a _district_ of Virginia, the General a.s.sembly, by a new amendatory Act, re-endowed this ”public school” with twelve thousand acres more of escheated lands and gave to it all the privileges, powers, and immunities of ”any college or university in the State,” under the name of ”_Transylvania Seminary_.”

In the wild and spa.r.s.ely settled country this seminary began a feeble existence under the special fostering care and patronage of the Presbyterians, who were then a leading religious body, aided by individual subscriptions and by additional State endowments.

The Reverend James Mitchel, a Presbyterian minister, was its first ”_Grammar Master_,” in 1785. In 1789 it was placed under the charge of Mr. Isaac Wilson and located in Lexington, with no more than thirteen pupils all told. The Reverend James Moore, educated for the Presbyterian ministry but subsequently an Episcopalian and first Rector of Christ Church, Lexington, was appointed ”Director,” or the first acting President of the Transylvania Seminary, in 1791.[1] He taught in his own house for want of a proper seminary building, with the aid of a small library and collection of philosophical apparatus.

This library and apparatus had been donated by the Reverend John Todd, of Virginia, who, with other influential Presbyterians, had been mainly instrumental in procuring the charters and endowments from the General a.s.sembly of Virginia.

The offer of a lot of ground in the town of Lexington[2] to the trustees of _Transylvania Seminary_, by a company of gentlemen calling themselves the ”_Transylvania Land Company_,” induced the trustees to permanently locate the seminary in that place in 1793. On that lot the first school and college buildings were placed, and on it was afterward erected the more commodious _University_ edifice in which taught the learned and celebrated President, Doctor Horace Holley.

This first _University_ building was destroyed by fire May 9, 1829. In later years (1879) this old ”College lot” was beautified and improved by tree-planting and otherwise by liberal citizens of Lexington, moved by the efforts of Mr. H. H. Gratz, and designated first ”Centennial Park,”[3] and afterward ”Gratz Park,” in honor of Benjamin Gratz, being not now utilized for special educational purposes.

With limited success the first ”_Director_ of Transylvania Seminary”

taught in Lexington until 1794, when he was superseded by the election by the Board of Trustees of Mr. Harry Toulmin as first President of the Seminary.

This gentleman, a learned Unitarian minister of the school of Doctor Priestly, and a native of England, resigned the Presidency in 1796, and was Secretary of State of Kentucky under Governor Garrard. (See _Collins' History of Kentucky_, volume 2, page 184.)

Intense feeling at the election of Mr. Toulmin on the part of the leading Presbyterians, who claimed the Seminary as their own peculiar inst.i.tution, caused them to obtain in 1796 a charter from the Legislature of Kentucky--now a State--for a new inst.i.tution of learning which they could more exclusively control. This was the ”Kentucky Academy,” of which the Reverend James Blythe, of their communion, was made President.[4]

On the establishment of the _Kentucky Academy_ by the dissatisfied Presbyterians in 1796, an active rivalry between that school and Transylvania Seminary operated to the injury of both inst.i.tutions as well as to the cause of education in general. Therefore, after two years of separate existence these two inst.i.tutions, with the consent of the trustees of both, were united in 1798 by Act of the General a.s.sembly of Kentucky into one, ”for the promotion of public good and learning,” under the t.i.tle of _Transylvania University_. The consolidation was made under the original laws which governed the Transylvania Seminary as enacted by the General a.s.sembly of Virginia.

TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY.

Under the act of consolidation of December 22, 1798, this University was organized by the appointment of Reverend James Moore, of the Episcopal Church, as first acting President, with a corps of professors. And now, _for the first time_ in the Mississippi Valley, was the effort made to establish a _medical college_.

Early in 1799, at the first meeting of the trustees of the new Transylvania University,[5] they inst.i.tuted ”The _Medical Department_”

or _College_ of Transylvania--which subsequently became so prosperous and so celebrated--by the appointment of Doctor Samuel Brown as Professor of Chemistry, Anatomy, and Surgery, and Doctor Frederick Ridgely as Professor of Materia Medica, Midwifery, and Practice of Physic. Doctor Brown qualified as Professor October 26, 1799, and Doctor Ridgely the following November.

Doctor Brown was authorized by the Board to import books and other means of instruction for the use of the medical professors to the amount of five hundred dollars[6]--a considerable sum in those days--and he and his colleague were made salaried officers of the University.

A Law College was also organized at this time in the University by the appointment of Colonel George Nicholas, soldier of the Revolution and member of the Virginia Convention, as Professor of Law and Politics.

DOCTOR SAMUEL BROWN,

The first Medical Professor of Transylvania University and of the great Western country, was born in Augusta, or Rockbridge County, Virginia, January 30, 1769, and died near Huntsville, Alabama, at the residence of Colonel Thomas G. Percy, January 12, 1830. He was the son of Reverend John Brown, a Presbyterian minister of great learning and piety, and Margaret Preston--a woman of remarkable energy of character and vigor of mind--second daughter of John Preston and Elizabeth Patton.[7] He was the third of four distinguished brothers--Honorable John Brown, Honorable James Brown, Doctor Samuel Brown, and Doctor Preston Brown.

After graduating at Carlisle College, Pennsylvania, where he had been sent by his elder brother, he studied medicine for two years in Edinburgh, Scotland. Doctor Hosack, of New York, and Doctor E.

McDowell, of Danville, Kentucky, were of the same cla.s.s. Returning to the United States, he commenced practice in Bladensburg, but soon removed to Lexington, Kentucky, where he was made Professor of Chemistry, Anatomy, and Surgery in Transylvania University in 1799, as above stated. In 1806, he removed to Fort Adams, Mississippi, where he married Miss Percy, of Alabama.[8] Afterward returning to Lexington he was re-appointed in 1819 to a chair in the Medical Department of Transylvania, that of Theory and Practice. Here he was a distinguished colleague of Professors B. W. Dudley, Charles Caldwell, Daniel Drake, William Richardson, and James Blythe until 1825, when he finally left Kentucky.

Doctor Brown was a man of fine personal appearance and manners; an accomplished scholar, gifted with a natural eloquence and humor that made him one of the most fascinating lecturers of his day. Learned in many branches, he was an enthusiast in his own profession, scrupulous in regard to etiquette and exceedingly benevolent and liberal of his time and services to the poor. Although active in scientific pursuits he left no extensive work, and but a few detached writings to perpetuate his fame.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOCTOR SAMUEL BROWN.

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