Washington and Lee University is an institution of higher education in Lexington, Virginia. It is primarily an undergraduate institution. A group of Scotch-Irish pioneers founded what is now Washington and Lee in 1749. The original institution was a small classical school for men called the Augusta Academy, in Augusta County north of Lexington. The academy moved to Lexington in 1780. Two years later, the Virginia General Assembly granted it a college charter as Liberty Hall Academy.
In 1796, George Washington, the first president of the United States, gave the academy shares of stock in a canal company that were valued at $20,000, an enormous sum at the time. In gratitude, the trustees changed the name of the school first to Washington Academy and then, in 1813, to Washington College.
After the American Civil War (1861-1865), Confederate General Robert E. Lee accepted the presidency of the college and served until his death in 1870. He soon raised the small college to high levels of scholarship, added courses in business and journalism, and made the Lexington Law School part of the college. Young men from throughout the South flocked to “General Lee’s college.” Lee is buried in a chapel he built on the campus in 1868, along with other members of his family. Thousands of tourists visit the chapel every year, which is sometimes called “The Shrine of the South.” To honor Lee’s contributions to the college, it was renamed Washington and Lee University in 1871.
The Washington and Lee University School of Law began to admit women students in 1972, and the entire university became coeducational in 1985. Notable alumni of Washington and Lee include Nobel Prize-winning medical researcher Joseph L. Goldstein, author Tom Wolfe, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, and Senator John W. Warner of Virginia.
The university’s website at https://www.wlu.edu/ offers additional information.
