Hampden Sydney College

Hampden-Sydney began as the southernmost representative of the "Log College" form of higher education established by the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in America, whose academic ideal was the University of Edinburgh, seat of the Scottish Enlightenment. The first president, at the suggestion of Dr. John Witherspoon, the Scottish president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), chose the name Hampden-Sydney to symbolize devotion to the principles of representative government and full civil and religious freedom which John Hampden (1594-1643) and Algernon Sydney (1622-1683) had outspokenly supported, and for which they had given their lives, in England's two great constitutional crises of the previous century. They were widely invoked as hero-martyrs by American colonial patriots, and their names immediately associated the College with the cause of independence championed by James Madison, Patrick Henry, and other less well-known but equally vigorous patriots who composed the College's first Board of Trustees. Indeed, the original students eagerly committed themselves to the revolutionary effort, organized a militia-company, drilled regularly, and went off to the defenses of Williamsburg, and of Petersburg, in 1777 and 1778 respectively. Their uniform of hunting-shirts - dyed purple with the juice of pokeberries - and grey trousers justifies the College's traditional colors, garnet and grey. The College, first proposed in 1771, was formally organized in February 1775, when the Presbytery of Hanover, meeting at Nathaniel Venable's Slate Hill plantation (about two miles south of the present campus), accepted a gift of one hundred acres for the College, elected Trustees (most of whom were Episcopalian), and named as Rector (later President) the Rev. Samuel Stanhope Smith, valedictorian of the Princeton class of 1769, who had been actively promoting the idea of establishing a college in the heavily Scotch-Irish area of south-central Virginia since he began his ministry there in 1774. Within only ten months, Smith secured an adequate subscription of funds and an enrollment of 110 students. Intending to model the new college after his own alma mater, he journeyed to Princeton to secure the founding faculty, which included his younger brother, John Blair Smith. On that 1775 trip he also visited Philadelphia to enlist support and to purchase a library and scientific apparatus. Students and faculty gathered for the opening of the first winter term on 10 November 1775. The College has never suspended operations. The administration of President Walter M. Bortz III has seen the expansion of the College Bookstore and a new Fitness Center, both completed in 2004; the renovation of Johns Auditorium and the Fuqua Computing Center, completed in 2005; and the construction of the new library and the Lewis C. Everett Football Stadium, both completed in 2007. In the planning stage are a new Fine Arts center and adaptive renovation of Eggleston Hall, the former library, for academic and co-curricular uses. Thus the College enjoys a modern campus that combines the beauty of its rural setting and the Federal architectural style with up-to-date technology; the result is an ideal living and learning environment for young men in the 21st century. The academic, social, and cultural life of the College continues to be enriched, and Hampden-Sydney looks ahead with a wholesome optimism, bred of a sober integrity of mission coupled with a history of prudent development, and made possible by an extraordinary succession of leaders and benefactors of rare ability, commitment, and vision.