The Preston and Olin Institute was a Methodist academy for boys in Blacksburg, Virginia which operated from 1851 to 1872. They chose the name Preston for Colonel William Ballard Preston, of nearby Smithfield Plantation, a well-known Montgomery County businessman, farmer, and statesman and a nationally known politician. The Methodist Church selected the name Olin after Stephen Olin, a beloved Methodist minister and former president of Randolph-Macon College. Olin and Preston Institute, a school for boys, opened in 1851, with William R. White as principal. The town already had a school for girls: the Blacksburg Female Academy, incorporated by legislative act in 1840. Until it was rechartered in 1869, it was named The Olin and Preston Institute. [1]
The institute fell into financial trouble in its later years and in 1872, in conjunction with strong lobbying by local residents and its principal, Thomas Nelson Conrad, the academy was selected to be reorganized as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Virginia Tech), the state's primary land grant institution under the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. Due to the specific stipulations in the Morrill Act regarding racial equality, the new institution had to be either racially integrated or the state had to establish a second institution for people of color. Virginia chose the latter, and as such, the newly founded Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College would receive only two-thirds of the land grant funding, and the remaining one-third went to Hampton Institute a black college in Hampton. In 1920 the Commonwealth transferred the black land grant funding to the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (now Virginia State University) in Petersburg, Virginia, an institution organized for African-Americans, and Virginia's first state-supported historically black college. [2]
The Preston and Olin building was originally constructed 1855 as a three-story, 100 x 40-ft. red brick edifice located on a hill facing Main Street in Blacksburg. The building contained three recitation rooms, a chapel, and 24 lodging rooms. During the Civil War, Major General George Crook occupied the building as his headquarters when his federal troops passed through Blacksburg following the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain. At the time, the building was empty because the school had closed due to the war. After the founding of the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, the Preston and Olin building was used as a dormitory until 1888.
After students moved into Barracks No. 1 (now known as Lane Hall), the Preston and Olin building was remodeled and converted into the Machine Shop, and two additions, the last completed in 1904, were made forming a quadrangle. In the early morning hours of June 14, 1913, the Preston and Olin building caught fire and burned to the ground. [3] The area where the Preston and Olin building once stood on the Virginia Tech campus is now the site of the Moss Arts Center.
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally owned land, often obtained from Native American tribes through treaty, cession, or seizure. The Morrill Act of 1862 was enacted during the American Civil War, and the Morrill Act of 1890 expanded this model.
Blacksburg is an incorporated town in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States, with a population of 44,826 at the 2020 census. Blacksburg and the surrounding county is dominated economically and demographically by the presence of Virginia Tech.
Virginia Tech (VT), officially the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI), is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It was founded as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1872.
A land-grant university is an institution of higher education in the United States designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, or a beneficiary under the Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act of 1994. There are 57 institutions which fall under the 1862 Act, 19 under the 1890 Act, and 35 under the 1994 Act.
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving African Americans. Most of these institutions were founded during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War and are concentrated in the Southern United States. They were primarily founded by Protestant religious groups, until the Second Morill Act of 1890 required educationally segregated states to provide African American, public higher-education schools in order to receive the Act's benefits.
Justin Smith Morrill was an American politician and entrepreneur who represented Vermont in the United States House of Representatives (1855–1867) and United States Senate (1867–1898). He is most widely remembered for the Morrill Land-Grant Acts that provided federal funding for establishing many of the United States' public colleges and universities as well as the Morrill Tariff. Originally a Whig, after that party became defunct Morrill was one of the founders of the Republican Party.
Hokie Stone is a grey dolomite—limestone rock found near Blacksburg, in western Virginia. It gets its name from the traditional nickname attributed to students and alumni of Virginia Tech.
James Kennedy Patterson was an academic who served as the first president of the University of Kentucky. His family immigrated from Scotland to Indiana in 1842 when he was nine years old. He pursued what meager educational opportunities were available in his new home, and eventually attended Hanover College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1856 and a Master of Arts degree in 1859. He briefly taught at Stewart College in Clarksville, Tennessee, but left the area when the Civil War forced the college to suspend operations. He became the principal at Transylvania Academy in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1861. When Transylvania was merged with Kentucky University and the newly formed Kentucky Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1865, Patterson became a professor at the new institution, and was eventually given charge of the constituent Agricultural and Mechanical College.
Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state.
The main campus of Virginia Tech is located in Blacksburg, Virginia; the central campus is roughly bordered by Prices Fork Road to the northwest, Plantation Road to the west, Main Street to the east, and U.S. Route 460 bypass to the south, although it also has several thousand acres beyond the central campus. The Virginia Tech campus consists of 130 buildings on approximately 2,600 acres (11 km2). It was the site of the Draper's Meadow massacre in 1755 during the French and Indian War.
John McLaren McBryde was the fifth president of Virginia Tech, serving from July 1, 1891 to September 1, 1907. McBryde was born in Abbeville, South Carolina. He entered South Carolina College in 1858 at age 17 before going on to the University of Virginia. In 1861, he returned to Abbeville where he joined the Confederate Army. McBryde was present at the opening bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina and fought in a Virginia cavalry unit. He later served as division chief of the Confederate War Tax Office in Richmond Virginia.
Thomas Nelson Conrad was the third president of Virginia Tech and served in the Confederate Secret Service during the Civil War.
For the character on the US TV series The Office, see Charles Miner.
The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is one of eight colleges at Virginia Tech with a three-part mission of learning, discovery, and engagement and it is one of the best agriculture programs in the nation. It has more than 3,100 undergraduate and graduate students in a dozen academic departments. In 2013, the National Science Foundation ranked Virginia Tech No. 6 in the country for agricultural research expenditures, much of which originated from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Colonel William Preston was an Irish-born American military officer, planter and politician. He played a crucial role in surveying and developing the Southern Colonies, exerted great influence in the colonial affairs of his time, owned numerous slaves on his plantation, and founded a dynasty whose progeny would supply leaders of the South for nearly a century. He served in the House of Burgesses and was a colonel in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War. He was one of the fifteen signatories of the Fincastle Resolutions. Preston was also a founding trustee of Liberty Hall when it was transformed into a college in 1776.
The Virginia Tech College of Engineering is the academic unit that manages engineering research and education at Virginia Tech. The College can trace its origins to 1872, and was formally established in 1903. Today, The College of Engineering is the largest academic unit of Virginia Tech and has 14 departments of study. Its undergraduate program was ranked 4th and its graduate program was ranked 30th among doctoral-granting universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2018. In 2014–15, the College of Engineering consisted of 10,059 students. The current dean is Dr. Julia Ross.
Abraham Lincoln Tower & Justin S. Morrill Tower, also known as The Towers, Morrill Tower or Lincoln Tower are two undergraduate residential houses at Ohio State University. The Towers are located on the Ohio State University across from the east banks of the Olentangy River. The towers are on Cannon Drive in close proximity of the Ohio Stadium, RPAC, and the Wexner Medical Center.
Solitude is a historic home located on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg, Montgomery County, Virginia. The earliest section was built about 1802, and expanded first in circa 1834 and then in the 1850s by Col. Robert Preston, who received the land surrounding Solitude from his father, Virginia Governor James Patton Preston. Dating back over 200 years, Solitude is the oldest building on the Virginia Tech Blacksburg campus.
William Addison Caldwell (1856-1910) became the first student to enroll in the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (V.A.M.C.) in the school's inaugural year in 1872. V.A.M.C. was later named Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University. Caldwell hiked as much as 28 miles through today's Jefferson National Forest in the Allegheny Mountains from Sinking Creek, Craig County to Blacksburg, Va. to enroll as the school's first student on October 1, 1872.