The offer of the trustees of Boydton Academy to sell the same was not accepted.
The committee authorized to purchase land for the College made report, and the committee was empowered to purchase land from several parties at an average of about $5.50 per acre.
The agent reported that the subscription of Mecklenburg county was $10,000. It was ordered that the subscription paper be deposited with the Treasurer.
The first Building Committee appointed was as follows: Hezekiah G.
Leigh, John W. Lewis, James Smith, Matthew M. Dance, Moses Brock, and
John Early; and here the deliberations of the first meeting of the Board
ended.
With a subscription list of less than $20,000, including the county subscription, a large portion of which, in those days, as in the present, was uncollectable and worthless, this band of workers went forward, "not knowing whither they were going," but, like Abraham, trusting in the Lord, whose spirit had prompted the enterprise, that he would bring about a successful issue. Could they have foreseen the difficulties ahead, the work probably would never have been undertaken, nor would Columbus ever have discovered a new world if he had foreseen the difficulties which were before him.
It is not untimely to pause and dwell on some of the actors in this work.
The chairman, Rev. John Early, who was afterwards Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was at this time in the prime of life. He was not a college-bred man. He probably valued college education as highly as he did because he felt so keenly the need of it. He was, however, in the best sense, an educated man, and a man among men. From his early manhood his brethren and fellow-citizens manifested their appreciation of him by calling him to the highest positions in the church and in the state. The latter, however, were not accepted by him. It may be safely said that no man ever lived in Virginia who was more intimately or more widely known than John Early. No man ever knew more men. Few ever had more seals to their ministry. Not neglecting his own peculiar work in the church, he was always foremost in everything that he esteemed promotive of the good of the church and the state. From the outset he threw into the college enterprise all his great energy, and gave it the benefit of his large practical sense, because he felt that the church, as well as the state, was in need of such an agency. Under the charter, as subsequently amended, he was elected President of the Board of Trustees, and retained that position for about forty years, rarely ever failing to attend the annual meetings, when attendance involved days of tedious and difficult travel over rough roads. When over eighty years of age he was found at his place in the Board. Doubtless his latest prayers were for the success of the cause to which he gave many of the years of his manhood's prime. Randolph-Macon College will never let the name of John Early be forgotten. His portrait adorns the Trustees' room, and his eyes look down every June on his successors in the Board of Trustees, who are laboring to carry forward the work which he and his co-laborers commenced in 1825.
The first secretary, Rev. William Andrew Smith, was another man of power, a self-made man, as such men are commonly called. He accepted the "call from on high" to do great things. He was endowed with a wonderfully fertile and active mind. When fully aroused in any cause his heart espoused, he was a power with the people and with deliberative bodies. Commencing active service for the College as Secretary of the Board, he lived to become the President of the College from 1847 to 1865. When he took charge of it, the College was at the lowest condition financially as well as in patronage, that it ever reached. Full of faith and zeal himself, he infused new life into it and animated its friends with fresh courage and zeal. Realizing that an endowment was absolutely essential, in 1855 he undertook to raise $100,000 for it, and succeeded. Of this endowment more will be said further on.
[Illustration: REV. LEWIS SKIDMORE. Original member of Board of
Trustees.]
Another self-made man among the corporators present was Lewis Skidmore. In native talent of a peculiar order, he was second to none of his associates. He had, however, none of the ambition of some of the others. For power of argumentation on any subject he took in hand, he was equal to the foremost. He said once, when asked at what college he had graduated, "I graduated at the anvil." When the hammer of his logic struck it shaped or shivered the object it struck. As punctual as a clock, the day before the Trustees were to meet, his rotund form would be seen about the same hour rising over the western hill as the sun was going down.