The Potomac and Virginia Company, and the James River Company were among those organizations for transportation which Washington aided for the opening up of the country. There was a recognition of his services to the country, and the legislature of Virginia in 1785, through Patrick Henry, then Governor, gave Washington fifty shares in the Potomac and Virginia Company, and one hundred shares in the James River Company. Washington replied that he had resolutely shut his hand against every pecuniary recompense during the revolutionary struggle; and that he could not change that position. He added that, if the legislature would allow him to turn the gifts from his own private emolument to objects of a public nature, he would endeavor to select objects which would meet the most enlightened and patriotic views of the Assembly of Virginia. The proposition met with hearty approval, and Washington held the stock in both companies, awaiting the time when proper and worthy objects should be found for the benefactions. In 1785 he proposed to Edmund Randolph and Thomas Jefferson, that the revenue of the stock in those companies be used for the establishment of two schools, one upon each river, for the education of poor children, particularly those whose parents had fallen in the struggle for liberty. The idea was a noble one, yet Washington's call to the large service of the College of William and Mary as its Chancellor, and to the country as its President, prevented him from carrying it out. He carried out the spirit of his idea by giving fifty pounds a year for the instruction of poor children in Alexandria, and by making large provision for the education of the sons of soldiers. In 1783 he honored a Princeton commencement by his presence, and bestowed upon the College a gift of fifty pounds. A tour through Georgia in 1790 gave him opportunity to visit and approve of the Academy of Augusta. About the same time the indomitable Kirkland, missionary to the Iroquois, was trying every source of influence and money in behalf of an academy in Oneida County, New York, to be located near the old Property Line, where both the sons of the settlers and the children of the forest might be educated. His visit to Philadelphia secured a generous benefaction from Washington, and at the same time his influence and that of others, so that Congress appropriated $15,000 yearly to "instruct the Iroquois in agriculture and the useful arts."