A Young Scholar's Glimpses
of the Charlottesville Academy and the University
in August 1819

Edited by Frank E. Grizzard, Jr.

At the time he wrote the letter printed below, John Hartwell Cocke, Jr. (1804–1846), of Bremo in Fluvanna County, was attending Stack's classical grammar school in Charlottesville in preparation for entering the University of Virginia when it opened. As the first-born son of John Hartwell Cocke (1780–1866) and Ann Blaws Barraud Cocke (d. 1816), and potential heir to several plantations consisting of many thousands of acres of land, much was expected from the young lad. Although he was intelligent and industrious, and later trained as an engineer at the College of William and Mary, ⁽¹⁾ John was hindered from moving fully into the role anticipated for him because he was severely afflicted by epilepsy, a condition which grew worse with each passing year and dominated the last two decades of his life until he died at the age of 42. John was easily and often embarrassed, and his frequent epileptic seizures led to his being shunned by outsiders; indeed, although he was one of the most eligible young bachelors in Virginia, he never married. His father considered him "awkward," "shy, reclusive, odd," and his family often sought to hide him from the hordes of visitors who appeared at their James River plantation. Although John was fond of his stepmother, Louisa Maxwell Holmes Cocke, whom his father married in 1821, she called his seizures "spells of derangement" and claimed that he was "exceedingly profane" and given to "violent wrath," "blood-boiling" anger. He was "barely stable" when his father was home and became "quite unhinged" when his father was away, which was often. Nevertheless, the elder Cocke in 1826 gave John management of over 1,000 acres of land at his Bremo Recess and Lower Bremo plantations, which he controlled until his death in 1846. ⁽²⁾

John Cocke began attending Gerald Stack's classical grammar school, the Charlottesville Academy, in the spring of 1819 after Jefferson informed John's father of Stack's recent arrival from Philadelphia. "I believe you may be assured he is the ablest classical teacher in America," said Jefferson, "and seems to be an amiable modest man. if your son is disengaged it is impossible to find a better situation for him." Cocke did not hesitate to place his son in the new school or to engage his board, as Jefferson also suggested, in Laporte's French language boarding house. ⁽³⁾ At Cocke's urging, Jefferson persuaded Wilson J. Cary of Carysbrook to make the same arrangement with Stack and Laporte for his son, Wilson Miles Cary, ⁽⁴⁾ and other young scholars attending the grammar school included Jefferson's grandson Francis Eppes and Eppes' cousin Wayles Baker, Browse Trist (the grandson of Jefferson's old friend Mrs. Eliza House Trist), and James Madison Randolph. Stack, who was educated at Trinity College in Dublin, had by the first week of July fourteen or fifteen pupils and Laporte nine boarders. Jefferson bragged that "our boys . . . are going on finely, in a style of instruction, solid & critical, beyond any example we have known in this state, and probably in the US. The boarders with Laporte too are rigorously restrained to ask for all their wants in French, which they are beginning to be able to do." ⁽⁵⁾ Shortly after his arrival in Charlottesville, however, John (along with all the other young boys living at the boarding house) was complaining about life at Laporte's, and in the fall his father sought to place him in the home of the university proctor, Arthur Spicer Brockenbrough. ⁽⁶⁾ Stack's school was disorderly, because, as Jefferson indicated, Stack lacked the necessary "nerve" to administer the proper amount of discipline required to keep a group of energetic young boys in line. Both the school and boarding house closed in the summer of 1820, after only sixteen months of operation. ⁽⁷⁾

By late August 1819, construction on some of the buildings at the university had been underway for nearly two years. Although Jefferson's architectural plan was not finished for nearly another decade, young John Cocke visited the construction site at the height of the most ambitious of the dozen or so seasonal building campaigns that were required for the erection of the university's buildings. For instance, Michele and Giacomo Raggi, Jefferson's famous Italian stonecarving brothers, had arrived at the university less than two months earlier to begin carving the ornamental marble capitals and bases planned to adorn the columns of the classically designed buildings; ⁽⁸⁾ "common stonecutters" were actively quarrying stone on Cocke's and others' lands; and the Philadelphia workmen whose kiln on the eastern side of the construction site that is described in the letter had started working only about six weeks earlier. ⁽⁹⁾ Interestingly, young John's is the only description of the kiln and brickyard that is known to exist.

The two-page letter signed John, Jr., is addressed to "General John H Cocke, Bremo Fluvanna," who docketed it "Aug: 27. 1819 J. H. Cocke Junr." The manuscript, which also contains a Charlottesville postmark dated 28 August, is in the Cocke Family Papers at the University of Virginia Archives, Alderman Library, Charlottesville. The letter, along with nearly all the letters referred in the notes, can be found in my documentary history of the construction of the buildings at the University of Virginia. ⁽¹⁰⁾

John Hartwell Cocke, Jr. to John Hartwell Cocke

Dear father, Charlottesville August 27th. 1819

I have been going on very well at school since I came from home. I have nearly made up for the time that I lossed at home and Mr Stack has heard me read all the greek that my classmate said while I was at home. I found when I came here that another schoolar has come and there are three or four more coming, which has encouraged Mr Stack very much. I expect we will be able to prevail upon him to stay the next year, if every thing goes right, but he is so fickle minded that the least thing will discourage him.—

I have begun some of Lucian's dialogues. in Græca minora they are very hard, yet Mr Stack, makes us get 30 or 40 lines, and it is almost impossible to attend to that well, and all our other lessons. We have nearly finished the 1 book of Satires in Horace, I expect we will finish Horace in about a month, and then We will begin Juvenal, and we will Terence, in a week. I don't know how we will do when we get into them for we have more now than we can do well;

I have been to the brickyard as you requested me, but as I know very little about brickmaking you must excuse me for not giving you as satisfactory a discription of it, as I otherwise would have done.—The yard is laid off in a more regular manner than I ever saw one, and every thing seem to go on with perfect order. They do not make up their mortar as we do with Oxen but with a spade, and make it in large piles and cover it with planks a day before they use it, the hole is near a branch and they always have a good deal of water in it. they have the table near the place, that they lay down the bricks and move it as they lay them down, and the mud is rolled to it. I have not yet Seen them moulding brick as I went there just as they began to Kiln they hack all the bricks in single hacks and under a large shelter which is erected for the perpose, which efectually keeps off the sun and rain. the kiln which I saw, was lined with a stone wall about a foot thick, about half way and the other part with brickbats:—they have got up the third pavilion as far as the first story, and have finished the brick-work of the dormitories between that and the Corinthian building—When you write tell me when you expect Uncle Atway ⁽¹¹⁾—Give my Love to every body and believe me your effectionate Son

J. H. Cocke.

The End

Notes