Garland, Landon C. (Landon Cabell), 1810-1895

Landon Cabell Garland was born on 21 March 1810 in Nelson County, Virginia. After graduating with honors from Hampden-Sydney College, he taught chemistry and natural philosophy at Washington College (Lexington, Virginia) for approximately one year, and then taught chemistry and natural history at Randolph-Macon College, until being elected president of that institution in 1837. In 1854, he was chosen to be the next president of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Because of discipline and student behavior issues, Garland lobbied and received permission from the state legislature to transform the university into a military academy. Many of the cadets who graduated from the university went on to serve as officers in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. As a consequence of that, the University of Alabama was burned to the ground by Union troops on 5 April 1865.

After struggling to rebuild the campus Garland accepted the chair of philosophy and astronomy at the University of Mississippi in 1867. Later, his was tapped to help establish a Methodist university in Nashville, Tennessee - Vanderbilt University.

Garland died on 13 February 1895 and was buried in a fenced graved near the Divinity Quadrangle on the Vanderbilt campus.

From the guide to the Landon Cabell Garland letters MSS. 0558., 1861-1865, (University Libraries Division of Special Collections, The University of Alabama)