Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203060413
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
His trek over mountains and through valleys on that autumn day ended in the Preston and Olin Building, where 16-year-old "Add" became the first student to register at the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, the commonwealth's new land-grant institution.
His brother, Milton M. "Mic" Caldwell, may have been the second. Mic's daughter, Katherine Caldwell Mendez, 90, remembers her father telling her that he walked the 28 miles with his brother.
The college eventually became Virginia Tech.
Tech historian D.L. Kinnear, in his book "The First 100 Years," describes that first day in the Preston and Olin Building:
The faculty gathered early; President [Charles L.C.] Minor unlocked the front door, and [they] filed into the building and somewhat nervously, it can be imagined, awaited the arrival of the first student.
The wait was much longer than had been anticipated, but finally William A. Caldwell from Craig County `drifted' in.
There is a completely unverified tradition that Caldwell's appearance at the college was motivated more by curiosity than by any intention to enroll as a student; . . . Whatever his real motive may have been, immediately he was given a state scholarship by the faculty and enrolled as the first student in Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.
Caldwell's scholarship, reportedly awarded by a faculty and administration ecstatic over finally getting a student, covered his $30 tuition, $10 fees and his $5 monthly rent.
"Table board" could be had for $12 a month, and coal reportedly was "convenient and cheap."
Other students trickled in that first day, prompting Minor to write to Gen. Joseph R. Anderson, a member of the school's board of visitors:
"We have now thirty students matriculated. . . . are in correspondence with a good many others, but [it is] plain that our beginning is to be smaller than had been expected by most of those who were best informed in the matter."
Calling the students "plain lads for the most part," Minor noted in the letter that he was "embarrassed by the fact that the wants of the students who have come to us have forced us to vary materially from the strictly technical training enjoined by the organization Committee's report."
Later, in his report to the state, he said many of the students came with "the scantiest entrance is steadily flowing on to as full numbers as can be comfortably accommodated."
Total enrollment during the first year of operation eventually reached 132.
Add Caldwell probably was among the students who lived in the Preston and Olin Building, a substantial three-story brick structure containing recitation rooms, a chapel and 24 lodging rooms.
Each year Add was enrolled, at least one of his brothers was enrolled as well. Mic, who never graduated, was on the rolls in 1872 and 1873 and again during 1876 and 1877.
Another brother, Frank B. Caldwell, about two years younger than Add, enrolled during Add's third year and attended three consecutive terms. But, like Mic, he did not graduate.
Like all students in first-year studies, Add would have been exposed to commercial arithmetic, bookkeeping, algebra, English grammar, geography with map drawing, descriptive astronomy, penmanship, free-hand drawing, lectures on physiology and hygiene, lectures on habits and manners, lectures on the value of agricultural and mechanical arts to society, French or German, farm or shop practice and military tactics.
From day one, the entire college was under military discipline. Students were "required to meet formations, march to classes, pass room inspections, have military passes when off campus and conform to other types of military behavior."
The uniform was a cap, jacket and pants of cadet gray trimmed with black.
Caldwell, a member of Company B, attained the rank of second sergeant by the middle of his final year in college.
His academic performance is only partly known, but surviving records do not indicate he was an exceptional student. He was not included in the list of outstanding students when he graduated, and he took an extra year to complete the three-year program.
His obituary says he graduated "at the head of his class," but it is likely that the reporter confused his status as the college's first student.
William "Add" Caldwell graduated on Aug. 6, 1876, with the college's second graduating class. On the morning of Aug. 9, the graduating class held an alumni meeting in the Lee Society hall and Caldwell was elected secretary of the alumni association.
Following graduation, Caldwell may have returned to Craig County to teach school. An editor of The Gray Jacket, the school annual, complained in 1877 that "so few of our `Old Boys' are farmers" and that "so many of them became teachers."
Certainly by 1880, Add, Mic and Frank were living with their parents in Sinking Creek and all three were teaching school.
Their father, like his grandfather, was a farmer who owned many acres. The large, two-story frame house, where his children probably were born, sits today above the base of a mountain with a panoramic view of the farmland he owned.
How long or where Add Caldwell taught is not known, but by 1887 he was living in Roanoke, possibly with his youngest brother, E. Gambill "Gam" Caldwell. He was working in the general office of Norfolk and Western and attending First Presbyterian Church.
Since Gam and Frank, who had attended college with Add, both worked at one time for N&W, the possibility exists that the three worked there together.
Before Add moved to Wilmington, N.C., around 1898 - he moved his church membership there in March 1902 - he became interested in the real estate business in Roanoke. But whether he derived an income from the sale of property is not known.
Add Caldwell's popularity continued in Wilmington, where he reportedly had many friends and was considered "a man of integrity and honor."
He was affiliated with St. Andrews Presbyterian Church and worked for several large wholesale firms on the wharf, traveling part of the time.
Perhaps one of these companies sold molasses since the Virginia Tech Alumni Association reported in 1911 that Add had been a salesman for a molasses firm.
After Add left the homeplace in Craig County, his brother Mic moved to Radford and later persuaded his parents to sell the family farm in Sinking Creek and move to Radford as well.
Two sisters, Grace and Nell - like Add, they never married - moved with their parents to a house across the street from Mic. During summer vacations, Add visited his relatives in Radford.
Sometime before 1910, Add's health declined. Katherine Caldwell Mendez, Mic's daughter, says he underwent surgery for a brain tumor.
She said the doctor told Add that salt air would be good for him, so he secured a job as a clerk at the Tarrymoore Hotel at Wrightsville Beach near Wilmington in the spring of 1910.
On June 15, 1910, Caldwell wrote to his niece that the hotel was "a fine place to spend the summer" but he would rather be in Radford.
"I have not been here long enough to tell whether the salt air is going to benefit me or not," he wrote. "I am feeling about the same, no worse or better."
A few days after he wrote the letter he fainted, resulting in a fall that apparently resulted in a head injury. He died 10 days later on June 29, 1910, his brother Gam by his side.
His old pastor from First Presbyterian Church in Roanoke, W.C. Campbell, conducted the funeral in Radford. Caldwell was buried in the family cemetery in Radford.
Today, the memory of William Addison Caldwell lives on through his niece and through a nephew and namesake in Radford, who presented the university with his uncle's Bible in 1989.
by CNB