Earlier volumes discuss a variety of University business involving the Board of Visitors, proctors, janitors, patrons, and hotel keepers. The earliest contain verbatim transcripts of the chairman's correspondence, student petitions, etc. Later volumes focus on student affairs. The chairman recorded faculty resolutions, withdrawals, dismissals and leaves of absence for students; refunding of fees; dispersal of monies for student purchases; admonishments to individual students for poor academic work and improper behavior (drinking, gambling, swearing, chewing, flute and horn playing, lighting fire crackers, food throwing, brandishing pistols and knives, cock fighting, appearing out of uniform, keeping dogs, playing ball on the Sabbath, firing tar barrels on the Lawn, failing to rise early, etc); student disturbances and disciplinary measures; course changes; student complaints, chiefly concerning food and lodging; and Jefferson birthday and 4th of July celebrations. Specific incidents of student disturbances include shooting dogs, 1831; the stealing of horses from worshippers at the Baptist Church for a race; attacking a local bookseller, 1831; hazing of new matriculates and exploding gunpowder at a professors' window 1833; visiting a house of prostitution, 1833; an altercation involving future Congressman A.H. Buckner, 1833; averting a duel involving future C.S.A. general Louis Wigfall, 1835; the non-fatal shooting of a student following a drunken party, 1837; the horsewhipping of Gessner Harrison by two former students, 1839 and the subsequent shooting of one of the two by a constable. There are frequent mentions of students' and professors' "servants" in the earlier volumes and occasional mention of "University hands" in the latter ones. Some of the incidents recorded include the flogging of "Thornton" for stealing, 1829; an assault on a female slave of profesor Patterson's, 1830; a free black washerwoman of bad character, 1830; "Thornton" and "Albert" gambling, 1831; Lewis Commodore, the bell ringer, "having proved a most valuable servant" was purchased by the University after he was "exposed to public sale in Charlottesville," 1832; student Merrit M. Robinson's Jefferson's Birthday oration mentioning abolition viewed unfavorabaly by students and faculty, 1832; student mistreatment of slaves, 1835-36; slaves supplying alcohol to students, 1837; dispute over hotel slaves doing errands in town for students, 1837; the beating of Lewis [Commodore] during a student prank, 1837; illegal keeping of hogs, 1838. Civil War events include students volunteering in defense of the state after John Brown's Harper's Ferry raid, 1859; formation of the "Sons of Liberty" and "Southern Guard," 1860.
