In 1915 Frederic W. Boatwright was the busy president of the University of Richmond (although at the time the school was still known as Richmond College). He had just lived through the first academic year of the school’s relocation from downtown Richmond to the western suburbs. He had supervised the building of a brand new campus with its several brick buildings. He had guided the beginnings of a separate school for women named Westhampton College. He had worked with the Baptist constituency and other friends and donors. He had raised funds. He had built a faculty. He even had to ring the bell for the change of classes.
Fred Anderson
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And in November of 1915, just back from attending the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, Frederic Boatwright took the time to answer a postcard inquiry from a 5-year-old boy. It was all about a subject of great importance to the young boy in Scottsville, Va. It was about rabbit traps.
On his official stationary, the president wrote: “I am glad to hear from you, and particularly glad to know that you have caught three rabbits in your trap. I wish I were there to make you another trap, and then maybe you could catch more. I can still remember what a fine thing it was to go to my traps on a frosty morning and see one of them down. What a delightful time I had imagining the things that might be in there! Sometimes I thought it might be a ‘possum or a coon. My heart would beat so strong that I would hardly know whether I was stepping on the ground, or on the air, and I generally ran most of the way.
“I used to be careful in skinning my rabbits and would sell the skins and put the money in my bank to help pay my way through college. I didn’t get but two or three cents apiece for them, but some of the rabbit money went to buy my books during my first year in Richmond College. I hope you are going to save your money and that before very long you will be down here at college where I can see you every day.”
The president concluded by sending his love to the boy’s family and expressing hopes that the boy and his parents might come and visit him at Richmond College.
The mother and father were Hattie and Leslie Walton. At the time, Leslie Harvey Walton was pastor of four churches on the Scottsville field. A native of Pennsylvania, he often told folks that “it was a blessed Providence” which led him to enroll at Richmond College. He had been asked by family friends to accompany their son to the college and he also decided to enroll. He graduated from the college in 1901 and earned a master’s degree from Richmond in 1905.
From the college he went to Fluvanna County where, at age 31, he was named headmaster for William E. Hatcher’s school, Fork Union Military Academy. He married a Fluvanna girl, Hattie Marshall Hughes. In 1906 Hatcher was among those who assisted in the ordination of the young man at the Fork Church. At the time Walton was serving as pastor of Lyles Church.
Frederic Boatwright in 1915
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Hatcher frequently was a guest speaker in churches; and once when he could not fulfill an obligation at the Scottsville Church, he sent his headmaster instead. When Walton returned, he told Hatcher that while there the church had invited him to come as their pastor and he had accepted.
And what about the boy with the rabbit trap? Robert Edward “Ed” Walton was the second son of the Waltons. When his older brother, Leslie, went to school, Edward, age 4, wanted to enter school. In order to pacify him, his mother taught him at home and the next year, still too young, he joined a neighbor child in another home school.
Edward Walton took the advice of President Boatwright (and likely his father’s advice as well) and attended the college, which by then had become the University of Richmond. Maybe he did see the president from time to time because Boatwright lived on the campus and was daily about the business of running the institution. He also kept a garden so he probably continued to make rabbit traps.
Ed studied physics under “the sage of Fluvanna,” R.E. Loving. He served as a physics lab instructor and he consistently made the honor roll. After graduating in ’29, he taught school for awhile and briefly served as a principal. From 1942 until his retirement in 1973, he worked as a physicist for the U.S. Navy Ship Engineering Center.
While living in Arlington, Ed, by then a widower, met Marie Hobbs and the couple married in 1967. Marie grew up near the Cumberland Gap in Lee County and joined her sister in studying at Virginia Intermont College, the Baptist school in Bristol. She finished her degree at Radford University and became an elementary school teacher.
After her husband died, Marie moved to Lakewood Manor, the Baptist retirement community in Richmond. She has enjoyed making new friends and living near a nephew and his family. She also learned to dabble at art; and her home is decorated with several of her paintings. Over her bed is an impressionist painting which she titled “Frustration.”
It was while going through old papers that she came across the letter about the rabbit trap and she wanted to place it at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society. Readers of this column may know that L.H. Walton left Scottsville to serve a long pastorate at the Westhampton Baptist Church, which was within walking distance of the UR campus. Ed Walton’s brother, Leslie, became principal of the Scottsville High School and, later, superintendent of schools for Albemarle County. Their sister, Harriet, taught biology at St. Catherine’s School in Richmond and was the first graduate of Westhampton College to be inducted into UR’s athletic hall of fame.
And what about President Boatwright? He was connected with UR for 68 years, including nearly 51 years as president. He also served three terms as president of the Baptist General Association of Virginia. And it all started by saving pennies from rabbit skins. Boatwright devoted most of his life to weighty matters, but the character of the man is poignantly revealed in the letter which he wrote to a 5-year-old boy.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.