The Yankee Learns Some History

Yesterday during the Good Reads session of Employee Development Day Mitzi gave us some history of the seminary and the library.

The seminary pretty much owes its survival to the diligence of treasurer Cassius Lee. Yes, of that Lee family; he was Robert E. Lee's first cousin. At the beginning of the Civil War, he put some of the seminary's funds in a Baltimore bank; a treasonous act. However, those funds put in southern banks were either destroyed or worthless at the end of the war because they were in Confederate bonds. He also persistently pursued reparations for damages done by the Union Army during the occupation when the seminary grounds and building served as a hospital. Ultimately he was successful in obtaining reparation funds before he retired.

As for the Bishop Payne Library is not named for Bishop Payne, first Bishop of Liberia, but for the Bishop Payne Divinity School. Virginia Theological Seminary established the Divinity School in 1878 for African-American students who could not be educated at the seminary. The Divinity School closed in 1949, and it's assets were transferred to VTS in 1953. The library holds the archives of the Divinity School as well as the African American Episcopal Historical Collection.