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University Communications

DIARY OF 1870 RICHMOND COLLEGE STUDENT IS TOPIC OF LECTURE AT UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND

March 22, 2001

The diary of a Richmond College student who graduated in 1870 is the topic of an April 1 lecture sponsored by Friends of Boatwright Memorial Library at the University of Richmond.

Fred Anderson, executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, will talk on "Secrets from the Private Diary of a Richmond College Man, Charles F. James, Class of '70 . . . 1870." His speech will begin at 2 p.m. in Jepson Hall 118. Admission is free and open to the public.

Anderson, who also is manager of the university archives, says that James became a Baptist minister and president of what is now Averett College. He also was "the first of the historians to document the Baptists' part in the struggle for religious liberties."

The university recently purchased the diary from a dealer. It reveals, Anderson says, what religious, academic and social life was like in the late 1860s at Richmond College, then located at Grace and Lombardy in downtown Richmond.

"There's even romance," Anderson says, in the correspondence James had with the young woman who later became his wife.

James' claim to fame as a student was in promoting the dining hall plan, which still exists. Before he successfully lobbied the administration for an on-campus dining facility, most students ate in boarding houses.