Charles Lewis Cocke, Founder of Hollins College

by William Robert Lee Smith

It must not be supposed that Mr. Cocke lost interest in the education of boys when the co-educational system was abandoned in 1852. No man in Virginia was more enlisted in the education of all the people than he. There must be a school for the boys in the Virginia Mountains, and in the later fifties, though sufficiently burdened with local cares, he turns his attention to this interest. With the valuable assistance of Dr. George B. Taylor, later an eminent Baptist missionary to Italy, he was the chief factor in establishing Alleghany College, in Greenbrier County, one hundred miles northwest of Hollins Institute. This county was included in the new state of West Virginia, organized in 1861. The school opened with one hundred young men and ran well for a brief season, but was suspended at the beginning of the Civil War. The buildings were occupied by Federal soldiers, and shortly afterwards were destroyed by fire. All subsequent efforts to revive the college were unavailing. With characteristic loyalty, Mr. Cocke matriculated his son, Joseph James Cocke, at the opening of the first session. The brave boy laid down his books at the first alarm of war and entered the Confederate army, and in the terrible battles in Northern Virginia, he was twice dangerously wounded. That boy is now a venerable and honored citizen of the State of Texas.

Long years after, Mr. Cocke bent his efforts towards the erection of Alleghany Institute at Roanoke, and had great satisfaction in its commodious buildings and its promising attendance of boys. In the course of varying fortunes this enterprise fainted by the way and ceased to be. One can but fancy that if Mr. Cocke himself could have held the helm in these two adventures, the story would have been different. The storms beat and the floods came, but Hollins Institute stands. Her standards are stirring thought currents and stimulating like enterprises in Virginia and the nation. For our pioneer in the Southwest, this is compensation and a crown of glory. Without one thrill of jealousy does he see the spread of his views and the certainty of large competition. To stand in his own place and make good, is the one guiding and all-controlling purpose of his life.

In 1860, Mrs. Hollins, now a lonely widow, signalized her profound interest in a new gift of $10,000. This generous and timely act pushed up the contributions of the Hollins family to the handsome sum of $17,500. The growing popularity of Hollins sprung the problem of enlarged facilities and to solve it was the design of this latest benevolence. It was greeted with boundless gratitude, and the Trustees deputed one of their members, Mr. Wm. A. Miller, to bear to her their most cordial thanks. Accompanying this message was an urgent request for the oil portraits of the two benefactors. In due time the portraits came, and to this day they adorn the walls of the Main Building, whose erection was made possible by the recent gift. An architect was employed, and work was begun on this building in the spring of 1861, on the very day that Virginia seceded from the Union. The tempest and blight of the Civil War came down to threaten the life of the Institution and to almost break the heart of the founder. Expectant hope had looked for early occupancy, but it was not to be. In one year the walls were upreared, the roof was on, and then the work stopped. The contractor quit his job because the war had disorganized labor and the situation was simply helpless. There stands the unfinished structure, and there it will stand, a ghastly skeleton for eight long years.

At this beginning of horrors, Mr. Cocke's reputation as a strong man was established, and the fair name of his school was extended beyond the limits of the State. Seasoned in old battles and richly schooled in experience, he stands in his place unterrified. He dares, even amid the clouds and disasters of war, to send out his adventurous thought, thirty years to the fore. What ought to be, what may be, the facilities and achievements of this Institution a generation hence? He is now too well fortified in his convictions of educational theory and practice, and of their fitness to the needs of the time, to be affrighted by the spectres and goblins of ultimate failure.

In 1862, he speaks to his girls and the public in this fashion: "The organization of this school is unlike all others in Virginia. To some extent it is denominational, but decidedly anti-sectarian. Its Trustees perpetuate their own existence. Its funds cannot revert to any other object. It is responsible to no religious body and its success depends solely on its merits. It looks to permanent existence and to the good of the whole commonwealth. Its successes have exceeded the most sanguine expectations of its friends. It was first to adopt a high standard of classical education for young women in Virginia; first to place the English Department under a regular professor; and first in the nation to adopt the elective system of studies. With the prestige of a history of twenty years, it may properly and confidently appeal to the general public to make it an addition to the permanent wealth and moral elevation of the country. I believe its reputation will spread until it draws pupils from all over the South." Under the distressful conditions, is there not something morally grand in this utterance? It was a prophetic speech, and the daring prediction was more than realized in the thirty years that followed.

In 1863, one hundred girls filled every room, and seventy-five applicants were turned away. Oh, for the forty-six student-rooms in that unfinished hulk! Sequestered snugly in the mountains, no Institution in the country suffered less from the demoralization of the war. Families driven from the areas of invasion sent their daughters to the haven of its seclusion. The faculty of four gentlemen and three ladies had ample occupation. It was at this juncture that the President dropped the wise remark that the success of an Institution demands a capable manager as much as qualified instructors, and that he is harder to find. Of course, during this period, the depreciated currency and the correspondingly high cost of living required advance in the rates of the tuition and board. In 1864, one hundred and twenty-eight students were crowded into the rooms, and an equal number were turned away. In these days of inevitable stringency, the fare was far from luxurious, but it was accepted by teacher and pupil with that cheerfulness which becomes sensible and considerate people.

That year the school was not immune to the alarms of war. A Federal raid, led by General Hunter, rushed into the town of Salem, nine miles distant, and the news spread consternation at Hollins, but without panic. The President had prepared a paper, stating the defenseless condition of the college and entreating protection by the General of any invading force. This paper he kept in his pocket, ready to be sent by messenger, if from any cause he himself should be prevented from going to make an oral request. Happily, Hunter came no nearer than Salem, and the awful suspense was relieved. On that very day, George Newman, the faithful colored driver, went to Salem with his omnibus, and was waiting at the depot, when the horsemen in blue came thundering down the street. He cracked his whip over his trusty four and dashed southward across the river, amid a shower of bullets. He was going in a course directly opposite from Hollins, but that was the only avenue of escape. When he was not heard from for the best part of two days, he was given up for lost. But late on the second day, who should drive in but this same George Newman, with an air of triumph and an ecstasy of smiles on his face! He came bare-headed, having lost his hat in the impetuosity of that patriotic retreat. The girls hailed him with a storm of acclamation and instantly took up a collection with which they crowned the hero with a new straw hat!

Mrs. Cocke, in these times of nervous excitement, was perfectly sure of her own demeanor in case of irruption by the enemy. She would stand defiant in the doorway and forbid all entrance. The family tell a story which the dear mother never denied. One day her son Charley, a lad of ten years, with some of the servants, was coming back to the stables with the horses which had been hidden in the woods of Carvin's creek, to escape the hands of the enemy. The youngsters came galloping down the road, when some excitable person imagining it a charge of Yankee cavalry, raised the alarm, and then followed the worst panic Hollins ever knew. Mrs. Cocke, quietly busy in the pantry, hearing the shrieks, following an irresistible impulse, left the pantry door wide open and vanished to some place, she was never quite sure where.

It was Mr. Cocke's custom in those days to send a group of girls in the omnibus to the Sunday morning service of one of the churches in Salem. Such was the economic stress of the period that a handsome new hat in the school produced a sensation. Fortune crowned one of the students with a beautiful headgear. She wore it to church, and generously, on the following Sunday put the treasure on the head of a comrade who was going up to worship. So the ornament became a regular attendant at the Salem services. Gathered at the church doors were the Salem boys, of course, and they soon became merrily interested in the new hat. One day after service, the girls found in the omnibus a note, inquiring: "Who does that hat belong to?" The owner lives, today, in Blacksburg, Va. Those trips to Salem ceased long ago, and now in the Hollins Chapel, regular Sunday evening services are conducted by chaplain pastors from the various denominations.

In the spring of 1865, pneumonia became epidemic in the school, taking off six of the pupils and two more in their homes. This disaster caused a suspension one month before the close of the regular term.