Henricus Colledge 1619

The Virginia Company began to develop the first university in English North America near Henricus in 1619.  The Colledge of Henricus, as it was known, offered a place of higher learning for both colonists and Native Americans.

The company provided instructions specifying that 10,000 acres be set aside for the university.  Later, an additional 1,000 acres was reserved for a college to provide religious instruction to the natives in order to “civilize” them.  The land set aside was on the north side of the river and extended from the falls down to the area adjacent to Henricus.

Enthusiasm for the project developed quickly in England.  Donations consisting primarily of altar cloths, books and communion silver were collected for the college.  In Jamestown, members of the first session of the Virginia Assembly in 1619 voiced their support for the school, where they requested workmen be sent to the colony to begin construction of the college. 

Unfortunately, the workmen sent to Virginia were hardly the “well-provisioned and armed tenants” promised by the company.  They were typical of early colonists sent to the New World and unprepared for life on their own in the wilderness. 

The Colledge of Henricus was a casualty of the Indian uprising of 1622.  Seventeen men were killed on college lands.  Survivors fled to the Jamestown settlement for safety.  The Company in London later sent a directive to Virginia ordering work resume on the college.  Though several attempts were made to follow this directive, public support in Virginia was lacking and attempts ultimately failed. 

Thus, the first permanent university in Virginia became the College of William and Mary, established by royal charter in 1693.  It might be said that it fulfilled the high hopes of the Virginia Company and of the earlier settlers at Henricus.