July 17, 2025
from the Record, Spring 2025
By Charles Pearson
On March 19, 2025, students from the Compass class titled History of Hampden-Sydney College (HIST 285) began excavating at the site of the first classroom building constructed at the school. The class, taught jointly by Elliott Professor of History Caroline Emmons and archaeologist Charles Pearson, is designed to teach the history of Hampden-Sydney College specifically for the 250th anniversary of the school. Completed in 1776, this three-story brick building, known originally as the Academy House and later simply as “the College,” stood until about 1830, when it was demolished. The exact location of the Academy House, as well as all the other 18th-century buildings at the school, was lost until rediscovered by ground penetrating radar surveys conducted in 2017 and 2020. Within one day Unlocking the History of Hampden-Sydney College of beginning their excavations, the students reached the buried, but still intact, foundation of the Academy House. The bricks in this foundation were almost certainly laid in the summer or fall of 1775, almost exactly 250 years ago.
Over the next several weeks, the students expanded their excavations, uncovering more of the building’s foundation. The discovery of these foundations provides us with tangible evidence of the history of Hampden-Sydney College. The importance of this kind of physical evidence is greatly enhanced, because, as the students learned, almost all written records produced during the school’s first century of existence have been lost. Not only were the brick foundations of the Academy House discovered, but in the area immediately outside of the foundations, students recovered hundreds of artifacts that had been lost or discarded during the 54-year life of the building. Among these objects were many personal items, including numerous pieces of clay smoking pipes (according to students obviously used by Patrick Henry who attended many trustee meetings at the school), metal buttons from jackets and waistcoats (according to students obviously lost from the clothing of the young William Henry Harrison, class of 1791 when he attended class in the building), metal cufflinks, pieces of wine bottles and drinking glasses, fragments of pottery plates, cups and bowls, and even a few pieces of animal bones. Also recovered were numerous pieces of writing slate and slate pencils, which students used in class because paper was prohibitively expensive.
Most of the objects recovered can be reliably dated to the years between about 1790 and 1820. Also discovered was a large, rectangular wrought iron object measuring six inches wide, nine inches long, and two inches thick. This object is an early door lock, and it was found alongside the foundation in the exact position where the main entrance to the Academy House would have been. There seems no doubt that this lock was on the original front door of the building, and it is truly emblematic of the work the students are doing to “unlock” the poorly known early history of Hampden-Sydney College.