Bennet Puryear

Bennet Puryear (1826-1914) was a faculty member at Richmond College from 1848 to 1858 and 1866 to 1895 and an administrator from 1869 to 1885 and 1888 to 1895. His academic positions included tutor, professor of natural sciences, and professor of chemistry, and following the elimination of the role of president, he served in the administrative role of chairman of the faculty, providing day-to-day oversight and management of the institution and serving as the public face of the college during decades of growth. 

Until a period of recent research, Puryear’s connections to enslavement and his public stances on race had not been considered in institutional narratives. Puryear directly enslaved individuals and participated in the leasing system known as “slave hire” in the 1850s and 1860s. Beginning in the 1870s, his rise as a regional and then national public figure was fueled by his position as Richmond College’s leader and his widely published opposition on taxation, public school funding, the rights of Black children to formal education, and the voting rights of Black men. Further details are available at Bennet Puryear, Enslavement & Race.

Early Life & Education

Bennet Puryear¹ was born on July 23, 1826, the son of Thomas Carlton Puryear (1775-1838) and Elizabeth Goode Marshall Puryear (1790-c.1852), and grew up on a plantation in Mecklenburg County, Virginia.² His father was part of an influential slaveholding and slave-dealing family whose properties spanned southern Virginia and northern North Carolina and extended to large forced labor agricultural operations in Alabama.³ His mother’s family included President Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall.⁴ 

Puryear was educated in private schools and by “tutors employed in his father’s home.”⁵ Beginning in 1844, he attended Randolph-Macon College, a Methodist institution then located in the Mecklenburg County town of Boydton,⁶ earning his bachelor’s degree in 1847 and master’s degree in 1850⁷ and reportedly “achiev[ing] the highest honors in his class.”⁸ Between 1847 and 1848, Puryear lived in Burnt Corn, Monroe County, Alabama, on the plantation of Mary “Polly” Puryear (1798-1850), widow of his cousin, Alexander B. Puryear (d.1842).⁹ He worked as a schoolteacher, likely at the town’s academy for boys.¹⁰ Puryear studied at the University of Virginia between 1848 and 1850, briefly considering the study of law but then focusing on a career in medicine, which, though his “heart was not in the matter,” offered him the greatest “hope of gain.”¹¹ 

Richmond College: 1850-1856

Puryear was offered the position of tutor (lecturer) of the Academic Department of Richmond College at an annual salary of $400 in July 1849, possibly while still studying at the University of Virginia. While Lewis Turner (1810-1892)¹² was professor of natural sciences, Puryear was responsible for lectures and experiments in chemistry and natural philosophy.¹³ After accepting the position, he resided in the Columbia mansion with Richmond College President Robert Ryland (1805-1899).¹⁴ 

Due to limited funds, the institution shifted to what was, in effect, a commission-based salary system for professors and tutors, compensating them based on each session’s “actual receipts.” As a result, Puryear was paid only $264.56.¹⁵ Ryland attempted to offset the difference by providing him with free board, but Puryear resigned on June 28, 1850.¹⁶ A month later, the trustees offered him the newly created position of professor of experimental sciences.¹⁷ In 1856, Puryear was also referred to as the college’s professor of natural philosophy.¹⁸ During his first phase of Richmond College employment, Puryear  delivered lectures at a local school for girls and to the general public on scientific subjects.¹⁹

Puryear’s efforts to develop Richmond College’s science program in the 1850s and throughout his career are reflected in board minutes and other records. He sought (often successfully) to raise and borrow money, secured institutional funds (including one commitment of $500), and traveled to New York to purchase laboratory equipment.²⁰ In December 1856, Puryear received funds from the Board of Trustees to pay for the “hire of a servant,” an enslaved person who would “attend to Prof. Puryear’s room and assist him in preparing lectures.”²¹

Puryear & Seeds of Faculty Control

Still in his mid-twenties, Puryear served as secretary of the faculty at a crucial time in the college’s development. While his name appeared with Robert Ryland’s on a letter to Virginia’s governor seeking a state convention for the promotion of education,²² at the college, he became a key figure in an effort to assert faculty control over institutional policy, voicing professors’ collective demands to the board and bypassing Ryland.²³ Ryland complained that he arrived at faculty meetings, led by Puryear, to discover that new business “had been matured without consulting me” and “adopted without my approval” and was told “no ‘apology’ is due, & no promise of reform will be made.”²⁴ 

“Civis” Letters, 1853

Puryear also used public platforms to influence Richmond College. In summer 1853, a series of essays calling for major administrative changes appeared in the Religious Herald, the denominational newspaper typically the source of positive Richmond College coverage (often contributed by Ryland). The five essays were written under the pseudonym “Civis,” which Puryear later acknowledged as his and continued to use until at least the 1870s. The essays challenged Ryland’s authority and advocated for changes similar to Puryear’s priorities when he later led the college himself. These included not relying on subscriptions (donations) for funding; borrowing funds to construct needed buildings (Ryland was against incurring debt); seeking architects with experience in academic design; providing meeting rooms for student societies; altering the room and board policy;²⁵ establishing entrance requirements to communicate elevated standards to the public;²⁶ addressing poor faculty salaries (a “well-known and lamentable fact”); reducing the time faculty were required to spend with students; making Richmond College more like the University of Virginia; eliminating honorary degrees;²⁷ and spending less institutional time on student discipline, instead establishing academic rigor as the “only efficient discipline.”²⁸

Faculty Advocacy

In a letter to the Richmond College board three-and-a-half months after the last of Civis’s “Richmond College” essays appeared in the Religious Herald, Puryear demanded that faculty salaries be increased—specifically so that more junior faculty, like Puryear, were “on equal footing” with George Dabney, a more experienced and well-known new faculty member whose arrival Ryland had credited with increasing student numbers.²⁹ Puryear subsequently submitted a faculty resolution to the board seeking a number of administrative changes: that the college require students to pay their entire tuition before classes began; that half of tuition payments received be immediately provided to the faculty (with half reserved in case refunds were necessary and then the remaining balance divided among the professors at the end of the session); and that an advanced student be provided free room and board in exchange for handling the “two lowest classes in Latin,”³⁰ a task for which Puryear was then responsible.³¹ The board instituted the requirement that tuition and fees be paid in advance of classes beginning, altered the boarding system,³² and, in response to another concern raised by Puryear and the faculty about the enrollment of young teenagers who cavorted on campus when not in class,³³ added a tutor to alleviate the burden of these students on professors. 

An 1854 effort by Puryear and the faculty to pressure the board for a salary increase received support from Ryland,³⁴ but Puryear later continued to bypass Ryland and approach the board directly to advocate for increased faculty salaries. Two subsequent board actions may have influenced Puryear’s decision to resign from his position at Richmond College. Trustees acknowledged the “smallness” of faculty salaries and provided additional funds to each man: $150 to the recently hired tutor, F.W. Reinhart; $100 to George Dabney; and just $50 to the remaining professors, including Puryear. Additionally, at a June 1858 board meeting, a resolution was proposed to elect a committee of three to make unscheduled visits to the college, in part to “inquire into the efficiency of the Professors.”³⁵ Puryear accepted the position of professor of experimental sciences at Randolph-Macon College that month.³⁶ 

Randolph-Macon College, 1858-1865

In a newspaper item containing the announcement of Puryear’s new position at Randolph-Macon, the school promoted both its faculty and role of its president, William Smith (1802-1870), as a “defender and vindicator of Southern institutions.”³⁷ As Puryear was settling into his position, he married Virginia Catherine Ragland on October 28, 1858 in a ceremony performed by Jeremiah Bell Jeter (1802-1880).³⁸ Puryear was close to Jeter, a founding trustee at Richmond College and Puryear’s pastor at Grace Street Baptist Church in Richmond. Jeter published Puryear’s work in the Religious Herald and later made him editor of the newspaper’s agricultural page.³⁹ 

Puryear and his wife moved into a home owned by William Smith located at the edge of the campus. At Randolph-Macon, Puryear influenced the move to an elective system of instruction, replacing a uniform shared curriculum. The change allowed students to select among four “schools” (departments), and Puryear led the college’s School of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy,⁴⁰ teaching chemistry courses and leading weekly physics lectures.⁴¹ While at Randolph-Macon, Puryear performed experiments for the students rather than teaching them techniques they could then perfect in the laboratory (a hallmark of his pedagogical style).⁴²

Puryear and Students

Puryear was described as “jolly” by some of his Richmond College students.⁴³ He was known for his “occasional” dosing of students with nitrous oxide; in one case the resulting euphoria led a young teenager to escape the building and scale a fence with Puryear following in “hot chase across the campus.”⁴⁴ 

Richmond College graduate, William Owen Carver, RC 1891 (1868-1954) provided a lengthy description of Puryear as an instructor. For all of Puryear’s promotion of academic rigor, Carver, later a professor and theologian at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, described Puryear’s class as an assured “easy credit”⁴⁵ and referred to the study of chemistry under Puryear as “a joke—a series of jokes.” He was a “striking, lovable, popular man of real ability but with no real interest in chemistry beyond agricultural applications.” Apart from “electric shocks and other simple, playful demonstrations,” as he had at Randolph-Macon, Puryear again performed all experiments himself, preventing students from gaining laboratory experience. In addition to his chemistry duties, Puryear taught a range of other subjects, including Greek and mathematics, when faculty positions were vacant.⁴⁶ In 1904, nearly a decade after his final departure from Richmond College, he was remembered fondly by his students, who, “wishing to remind him of their affectionate regard,” gave him a gold watch and “numerous complimentary letters.”⁴⁷

Enslavement and the Civil War

Puryear’s involvement in enslavement is documented in records related to his father’s estate, property tax records, Federal Census records, Confederate impressment records, and his own writings. Through his father’s estate, he received an enslaved man named Godfrey.⁴⁸ Puryear was taxed on two to three enslaved individuals annually between 1859 and 1861.⁴⁹ The 1860 Federal Census records Puryear as leasing four enslaved individuals: a man, a woman, and two girls (ages 9 and 15).⁵⁰ During the Civil War, as part of the Confederate effort to secure laborers for the construction of fortifications at key defensive locations in the state, enslavers were required to supply men they enslaved for periods of time and were financially compensated for the “impressment” of these men. Mecklenburg County impressment records show that in 1863 Puryear enslaved one man between the ages of 18 and 55⁵¹ and in 1864 enslaved two men between the ages of 18 and 55.⁵² In published writing in 1875, Puryear described himself as “the owner of slaves until robbed of my property under the forms of law”⁵³ (presumably a reference to the 13^th Amendment). Additional information and images of records can be found at Bennet Puryear, Enslavement & Race. 

Civil War

During most of the Civil War, Puryear remained associated with the Randolph-Macon College campus. The college was run “under a complete system of military government” for close to a year-and-a-half, with Smith designated the “Colonel Commanding Corps Cadets” and Puryear serving as “Captain.” One institutional historian referred to the effort as a costly “farce.”⁵⁴ The school had few students and suffered from the resignations of key faculty before it finally suspended operations in July 1863.⁵⁵ Puryear and another professor, William B. Carr, then leased the college buildings from trustees and operated a “Classical School” on the campus.⁵⁶ In October 1863, Puryear placed an advertisement seeking students, and he continued to operate the school until at least February 1865.⁵⁷ 

Records are unclear on Puryear’s military service during the war. He is described by one source as enlisting in the 3rd Virginia Cavalry (Company A, Boydton Cavalry or Mecklenburg Dragoons) in 1861 as “an experienced horseman”; there is no additional information providing his rank or any activity with the unit. At Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender in 1865, Puryear was recorded among the members of Company E of Virginia’s 14^th Regiment, then part of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia (referred to as “prisoners of war”). The Clarksville Blues was a local militia in Mecklenburg County that became part of Company E, and this may have been Puryear’s path to the regiment, though he was not recorded as a member in May 1861.⁵⁸ Puryear’s advertisements for his school indicate that he remained situated in Boydton in Mecklenburg County and was not fighting between 1863 and February 1865.⁵⁹ According to a pardon document, however, on April 9, 1865 he was 60 miles away, a private in Lee’s army pardoned by the federal government. No further details have been located.

Post-War

Puryear’s newspaper advertisements indicate he was still seeking students for his school on the Randolph-Macon campus in fall 1865.⁶⁰ During a four-month occupation of the campus by federal forces, however, Randolph-Macon trustees met on August 15, 1865 and declared all four department chairs empty, including Puryear's.⁶¹ After Robert Ryland resigned as Richmond College president in 1866, with the institution financially devastated by the Civil War, the board became directly responsible for faculty recruitment. Trustees James Thomas, Jr. (1806-1886), Jeremiah Bell Jeter, and John L. Burrows (1814-1893) offered Puryear a position. Puryear accepted and immediately began advising trustees on ways to make the public aware of the college’s reopening (“the advertisements sh^d be out & other agencies employed to awaken the attention of the public”). He wrote that he expected to be in Richmond within ten days and was ready to get to work since there were “many important factors to be arranged by the faculty.”⁶² 

Richmond College, 1866-1895

Puryear and Professor of Latin Edmund Harrison moved into the Columbia mansion previously occupied by Ryland.⁶³ After an unsuccessful effort to recruit former trustee John A. Broadus (1827-1895) as president, the board elected Tiberius Gracchus Jones (1821-1895), who also moved into Columbia, which trustees declared the “residence of the President” in August 1866.⁶⁴ Puryear and Harrison then received $340 and houses and grounds on the campus rent-free.⁶⁵ 

Puryear again sought and received institutional funds to travel to New York to restock the college laboratory.⁶⁶ Over the following years the institution attempted to find its financial footing, taking out additional loans and selling real estate. When faculty demanded that the board pay salary shortfalls in January 1868, trustees reminded them that “at the time of accepting their appointments” as professors, “the Board was without resources.” The securing of faculty to reopen the institution was understood to have been “an experiment.” The four members of the faculty would have to accept salaries of $750 each, $200 below what they had agreed. President Jones was allotted $1,500.⁶⁷ 

Chairman of the Faculty

The following year, Puryear, according to Jones, was at the center of Jones’s removal as president; the abolition of the president role; and Puryear’s acquisition of, in effect, presidential power as the institution’s first chairman of the faculty. Jones described the effort as a “combined attack” on his “position as President,” meant to “introduce the full University [of Virginia] System which . . . substitutes for the President a chairman” who would be elected from and by the faculty. Puryear was elected chairman of the faculty on June 17, 1869.⁶⁸ Except for the period between December 1885 and December 1888, he remained in the position until 1895. In his first stint, enrollment grew from 90 to 160 and the faculty from five to nine between 1866 and 1870;⁶⁹ a campus physician was hired;⁷⁰ the main campus building was significantly augmented;⁷¹ and the influence of student societies, fraternities, and athletics on campus culture increased.⁷²

Professor of Mathematics Robert E. Gaines (1860-1959), whose career overlapped with Puryear’s last years as Chairman of the Faculty, recalled that Puryear led unilaterally, chafing at the interference of trustees or even other faculty: “A famous expression of his was that eight men have more sense than forty, and that one man has more sense than eight. The significance of this remark lay in the fact that [at that time] we had forty trustees, eight faculty members, and one Chairman of the Faculty.”⁷³

While Puryear enjoyed almost total control of the operations of the institution, beginning in 1885, alumni began pressing the board to restore the role of president. The idea languished for three years before returning to trustees’ attention in 1888, when Puryear was briefly out of power and the institution was led by Henry H. Harris, a professor of German and Greek. Harris resigned his chairmanship, and Puryear returned to the role.⁷⁴ In December 1891, the presidency was offered to West Virginia Congressman William L. Wilson (1843-1900). After his refusal in July 1892, Puryear continued to lead the institution for another three years. 

Puryear’s leadership between 1888 and 1895 was marked by further institutional growth and wider public awareness of Richmond College. Athletics continued to gain prominence, and the football team was known as “Professor Puryear’s Colts.”⁷⁵ During the Harris administration, the faculty had expanded, including the addition of recent graduate Frederic W. Boatwright (1868-1951),⁷⁶ and more faculty were added in August and December 1890.⁷⁷ Puryear promoted Richmond College in a series of articles in the Religious Herald. He disputed that the institution was receiving fewer gifts than Randolph-Macon and Roanoke College and assured readers that the college was “richer today than ever before—stronger in her resources, stronger in her equipment, stronger in the public confidence. Her morale, always high, was never higher than now.”⁷⁸

Puryear was nationally known as the leader of Richmond College. When his opinions on post-Civil War relations between the North and South were featured in the Philadelphia American, Utah’s Salt Lake City Tribune excerpted the item, noting Puryear’s role as “Head of the Faculty of Richmond (Va.) College, the leading educational institution of the great Baptist denomination in the South.”⁷⁹ In 1884, administrators of three institutions of higher education were interviewed by the New York Herald on their responses to the “Blair Education Bill,” a sweeping effort to give the federal government control of public education. Puryear, who was in strong opposition, was featured along with the president of Cornell University and the faculty chairman of the University of Virginia.⁸⁰ His signed advertisements for the institution appeared in newspapers and magazines across the southern and midwestern United States.⁸¹

Puryear, Boatwright & the Return of the Presidency

Between 1892 and 1895, the faculty failed to nominate a chairman, so the board nominated Puryear for the position each year. By summer 1894, however, the board was moving to eliminate the faculty chairman position and return to presidential leadership.⁸² A struggle was underway between Puryear, Boatwright, and their respective followers. Both men had “among the trustees, faculty, and students many warm friends,” and the nomination of either would have inflamed the other’s faction.⁸³ Among students, Boatwright was the preferred candidate of the “ministerials”⁸⁴ (those studying to become Baptist ministers) and who resided in the campus’s main building, while members of fraternities and other students who lived in other dormitories and cottages were largely “anti-Boatwright,” believing he was anti-fraternity and “intended to break them up.”⁸⁵

The board moved to reestablish the presidency at meetings in June and December 1894. Boatwright’s name was placed in nomination for the position on June 21, 1894, and the nomination debated at length on December 11. A newspaper account of the December meeting described two trustees in a “heated controversy” which nearly became “a personal difficulty.” The vote was 17 for Boatwright and 13 against.⁸⁶ A group of trustees walked to Boatwright’s home with the news. Meanwhile, students marched to Boatwright’s home, chanting “Richmond College lies buried in the clay and Boatwright goes marching on,”⁸⁷ likely in reference to the belief that Boatwright would constrain elements of student life they associated with the institution’s fundamental character. A pro-Boatwright group meanwhile marched to Puryear’s home to “hiss and boo him.”⁸⁸ The Richmond Dispatch published rumors of possible faculty resignations.⁸⁹

On Friday, December 19, 1884, an effigy of Boatwright was hung in front of the library facing Franklin Street, a streamer reading “Three cheers for B. Puryear” attached to its coat. News of the incident extended across the state, with the Alexandria Gazette writing, “Richmond has again made itself notorious.”⁹⁰ A group of “patrons and friends” of the college circulated a petition to pressure trustees to reconsider Boatwright’s selection, which, the petition claimed, was “made in ignorance of vital and essential facts.” His appointment, they asserted, would “bring fatal disaster to the college.”⁹¹ 

Boatwright accepted the nomination in early January and sought an opportunity to face those who had cast “malignant aspersions” on his character, writing that “there is nothing in my record the exposure of which could bring any blush to my cheek.”⁹² Trustees invited those opposed to Boatwright, including faculty, to address the board to “formulate their charges” against his character, though they refused to hear concerns centered on subjects “such as scholarly qualifications,” which was Puryear’s apparent concern. Puryear came to the meeting prepared to speak for “an hour or more” on the “unfitness” of Boatwright for the position⁹³ and was repeatedly called out of order. He eventually took his seat saying, “I am shut up.” Harris and trustee Dr. Hugh Wythe Davis (1840-1914) resigned their positions in protest of the board’s support of Boatwright (though Davis later withdrew his resignation).⁹⁴ Student protests continued. 

In May 1895, Puryear was one of two faculty who refused to declare allegiance to Boatwright and give statements of their intent to remain at the college. He was censured by the board on May 30.⁹⁵ He began negotiating the purchase of a large property close to the town of Orange, Virginia, and on June 7 Fredericksburg’s Free Lance-Star reported his plan to open a school for boys on the property.⁹⁶ On June 18, after submitting his annual Report on the Faculty, Puryear offered the board his letter of resignation and requested that trustees’ “disapproval of his conduct” the previous month be withdrawn.⁹⁷ In a vote of 17 to 8, the board refused his request, and a resolution was introduced establishing an inauguration date for Boatwright.⁹⁸ Two months after Puryear’s resignation, while still in Richmond, he placed an advertisement seeking ten students for his planned new school; the ad appeared below one for Richmond College.⁹⁹ Puryear and his family soon settled at Edgewood, a 12-room house on more than 200 acres of land in Madison County, six miles from the town of Orange.¹⁰⁰

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Public Writings on Race, Public Education & Suffrage, 1875-1888

‍Beginning in the mid-1870s, Puryear’s increasing public profile as the leader of Richmond College was entwined with fame related to his writings on politics and race. Puryear published his first pieces under his usual pseudonym of Civis and publicly acknowledged his use of the name in August 1876.¹⁰¹ With Virginia’s public education system in its early years, Puryear was at the forefront of a movement to eliminate public schools, insisting that taxpayer funds instead be used to pay off the state’s debt (see “Funders” at Encyclopedia Virginia). After introducing his views on public education in the Religious Herald, he published a four-part essay in the Southern Planter and Farmer entitled, “The Public School in its Relations to the Negro.” In these pieces, published between December 1875 and May 1876, Puryear argued that due to what he viewed as racial differences in cognition and capacity, Black children, in particular, should not be offered formal education, nor should Black men be allowed to vote.¹⁰² Virginia should resist what he viewed as “the hideous doctrine of negro equality.”¹⁰³ The essay, republished in pamphlet form, made Puryearone of the most widely known men of the whole South.”¹⁰⁴ 

Support for and opposition to Puryear’s writings appeared in local, regional, and national newspapers and magazines, with at least two emphasizing his relationship with Richmond College.¹⁰⁵ In January and February 1878, Puryear published another series of articles about the state’s debt which, in part, called for immediate whipping of accused criminals as a cost saving measure.¹⁰⁶ At Richmond College, student debaters cited Puryear’s “able and eloquent articles” as they came to the resolution that “the public school system in Virginia should be abolished!”¹⁰⁷ At an 1881 gathering of Richmond College alumni, longtime trustee Thomas J. Evans (1822-1889) spoke for his fellow board members and praised Puryear’s “essays over the signature ‘Civis’ on that monster of iniquities the free school system,” predicting that they “will be held up as texts and axioms” on the subject after politicians of the day are forgotten.¹⁰⁸ Puryear also advocated a poll tax to diminish Black political power. Georgetown College (Kentucky) and Howard College (Texas) awarded Puryear honorary doctorates following the series. 

In January 1898, a long letter he submitted to the Richmond Dispatch was prominently placed with the headline, “The Underwood Constitution: A Vigorous Letter Denunciatory of It By Prof. Puryear.” Puryear called for a new Virginia constitution that would sharply curtail the rights of Black citizens, replacing the “Underwood Constitution” put into place after the Civil War which protected the rights of Black men to vote and participate in politics.¹⁰⁹ In 1900 and 1901 items published in the Richmond Dispatch, he continued to argue for poll taxes and property requirements, promote social segregation, and state his aversion to the idea of racial equality.¹¹⁰

Excerpts from Puryear’s published views on race and racial exclusion can be found in Bennet Puryear, Enslavement & Race. 

Marriages and Children

With his first wife, Virginia Catherine Ragland Puryear (1830-1870), Puryear had five children: Lewis Puryear (1860-1932); Charles Puryear, RC 1881 (1860-1940); Frank Puryear, RC 1884 (1863-1929); Sarah Puryear Hill (1866-1943); and Virginia Catherine Puryear (1870-1948). All three sons attended Richmond College.¹¹¹ 

Following his first wife’s death, he married his third cousin, Elizabeth “Ella” Marion Wyles (1849-1914) on September 14, 1871.¹¹² As a young teenager, Ella had lived close to the home of Puryear and his first wife.¹¹³ Puryear had five children with Ella Wyles Puryear: Elizabeth Leroy Puryear [Mayo] (1874-1950); William Ragland Puryear (1879-1966); Alice Wyles Puryear [Cobb] (1881-1922); Bennet Puryear, Jr. (1884-1982); and Lucy Goode Puryear Garnett (1886-1926).

Despite Puryear’s opposition to publicly funded education, prior to his 1895 departure from Richmond College, his younger children attended Richmond’s public schools.¹¹⁴ According to the family of Puryear’s youngest daughter, Lucy Puryear Garnett, however, Puryear “turned against education for women,” refusing to support her studies, though she ultimately graduated from Hollins College and pursued a career in education. Her daughter, Lucy Goode Garnett Lacy, M.D., W’44, (1924-2018), graduated from Westhampton College and had a long career in psychiatry, with a particular focus on the care of patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder.¹¹⁵ Charles Puryear became a Professor of Mathematics and Dean at Texas A&M, and Sarah Puryear Hill was a music educator.¹¹⁶ Bennet Puryear, Jr. achieved the rank of Major General in the United States Marine Corps.

Death and Memorialization

Puryear died at Edgewood on March 30, 1914 at age 88.¹¹⁷ State and national newspapers published the news of his death, and Virginia papers detailed his relationship to Richmond College (“one of the best known men connected with the college” who had “done much to elevate its standards”)¹¹⁸ and his writings (“‘Public School in its Relations to the Negro’ . . . attracted very wide attention” and “his articles were everywhere talked of”).¹¹⁹ His funeral took place at Grove Avenue Baptist Church in Richmond, and he was buried in Hollywood Cemetery. His honorary pallbearers included Richmond College President Frederic W. Boatwright, Professor Robert E. Gaines, and several trustees.¹²⁰ 

Sarah Puryear Hill, Puryear’s daughter, provided a $50,000 bequest to the University of Richmond to create fellowships in chemistry. Following her death in December 1943, the Executive Committee of the board decided that, “In honor of Dr. Bennet Puryear and in appreciation of Mrs. Sarah Puryear Hill’s bequest, the President is directed to name the present Chemistry Building ‘Bennet Puryear Hall.’”¹²¹  

In 2021, the University of Richmond Board of Trustees initiated development of Naming Principles to guide naming decisions at the University. Those principles were adopted in March 2022 and included the stipulation that “No building . . . at the University should be named for a person who directly engaged in the trafficking and/or enslavement of others or openly advocated for the enslavement of people.” Accordingly, the Board renamed Puryear Hall, which is now known as Fountain Hall.¹²²