The State of Virginia, in 1780--when "Kan-tuck-ee" or "Kentuckee," as this country was then called, was only a little-explored portion of that State--placed eight thousand acres of escheated lands within that county into the hands of thirteen trustees "for the purposes of a public school or _seminary of learning_," that they "might at a future day be a valuable fund for the maintenance and education of youth; it being the interest of this Commonwealth always to promote and encourage every design which might tend to the improvement of the mind and the diffusion of knowledge, even amongst the most remote citizens, whose situation a barbarous neighborhood and a savage intercourse might otherwise render unfriendly to science." Three years thereafter (1783), when Kentucky had become a _district_ of Virginia, the General Assembly, by a new amendatory Act, re-endowed this "public school" with twelve thousand acres more of escheated lands and gave to it all the privileges, powers, and immunities of "any college or university in the State," under the name of "_Transylvania Seminary_." In the wild and sparsely settled country this seminary began a feeble existence under the special fostering care and patronage of the Presbyterians, who were then a leading religious body, aided by individual subscriptions and by additional State endowments. The Reverend James Mitchel, a Presbyterian minister, was its first "_Grammar Master_," in 1785. In 1789 it was placed under the charge of Mr. Isaac Wilson and located in Lexington, with no more than thirteen pupils all told. The Reverend James Moore, educated for the Presbyterian ministry but subsequently an Episcopalian and first Rector of Christ Church, Lexington, was appointed "Director," or the first acting President of the Transylvania Seminary, in 1791.[1] He taught in his own house for want of a proper seminary building, with the aid of a small library and collection of philosophical apparatus. This library and apparatus had been donated by the Reverend John Todd, of Virginia, who, with other influential Presbyterians, had been mainly instrumental in procuring the charters and endowments from the General Assembly of Virginia.