Benjamin Stoddert Ewell (June 10, 1810 – June 19, 1894) was a United States and Confederate army officer, civil engineer, and educator from James City County, Virginia. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1832 and served as an officer and educator.

Although he personally did not favor secession of Virginia from the Union, at the outset of the American Civil War (1861–1865), he helped form local militia in the Peninsula region of Hampton Roads. His work designing and constructing the Williamsburg Line of defensive works of the city and Fort Magruder at its center was a factor in delaying Federal troops attempting to chase retreating Confederates during the Peninsula Campaign, a failed attempt to capture the capital city of Richmond in 1862. His younger brother was Confederate General Richard S. Ewell, a senior commander under Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.

Benjamin Ewell is best remembered for his long tenure as the sixteenth president of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg before, during and after the American Civil War. Benjamin Ewell's tireless efforts to restore the historic school and its programs during and after Reconstruction became legendary in Williamsburg and at the college and were ultimately successful, with funding from both the U.S. Congress and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Youth, education, early career

Benjamin Stoddert Ewell was born in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. He was the son of Dr. Thomas Ewell and his wife Elizabeth Stoddert Ewell, and was a grandson of Benjamin Stoddert, first U.S. Secretary of the Navy.

He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1832, and assigned to the Fourth Artillery of the U.S. Army. However, Ewell stayed on as an assistant professor of mathematics at West Point from 1832 to 1835, and assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy there in 1835 and 1836.

In 1836, he left West Point and became an assistant engineer of the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad, connecting Baltimore, Maryland with Sunbury, Pennsylvania, from 1836 until 1839.

Moving to Virginia in 1839, at Hampden–Sydney College, he became professor of mathematics, serving from 1839 to 1842 and of mathematics and natural philosophy from 1842 to 1846. He then moved to Lexington, Virginia, where he was professor of mathematics and military science at Washington College (which later became Washington and Lee University) from 1846 to 1848. He was commissioned as a colonel in the Confederate Army. In 1861 and 1862, under General John B. Magruder and the Army of the Peninsula, Ewell had the primary responsibility for developing and constructing the Williamsburg Line, a line of defensive fortifications across the Virginia Peninsula east of Williamsburg anchored by College Creek a tributary of the James River on the south and Queen's Creek, a tributary of the York River on the north. A series of 14 redoubts were built along the line, with the earthen Fort Magruder at the junction of the two main loads leading from the lower Peninsula to the east, the Williamsburg-Yorktown Road, and the Lee's Mill Road.

Following the Battle of Williamsburg on May 5, 1862, during the Peninsula Campaign, with 3,800 Confederate and Union casualties, Williamsburg and the College of William and Mary were occupied by the Union Army. The Brafferton building of the college was used for a time as quarters for the commanding officer of the Union garrison occupying the town. On September 9, 1862, drunken soldiers of the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry set fire to the college building, purportedly in an attempt to prevent Confederate snipers from using it for cover. Much damage was done to the community during the Union occupation, which lasted until September 1865.

After the Battle of Williamsburg, Ewell left the 32nd Virginia Infantry to join the staff of General Joseph E. Johnston.

In 1888, William & Mary resumed operations under a substitute charter when the Virginia General Assembly passed a bill appropriating $10,000 to support the college as a state teacher-training institution. Once he had ensured that the college he had cherished and protected would survive, the 71-year-old Ewell relinquished the presidency and went into retirement. Lyon Gardiner Tyler (son of US president and alumnus John Tyler) became the 17th president of the college following President Ewell's retirement.

Benjamin Ewell remained in Williamsburg as president emeritus of the college until his death on June 19, 1894. and papers relating to his service as president of the College of William and Mary can be found at the Special Collections Research Center at the College of William and Mary.

Legacy

thumb|[[Ewell Hall on the campus of the College of William & Mary]]

  • The unincorporated community of Ewell in James City County and Ewell Station located along the Peninsula Extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) which was built through the area in 1881 by Collis P. Huntington, were named for him.
  • Ewell Hall, the historic plantation house he built at the former Ewell Farm eventually became the restored centerpiece of a cemetery, Williamsburg Memorial Park, between Williamsburg and Lightfoot in James City County.
  • Ewell Hall on the Old Campus of the College of William and Mary is named for him.
  • In 1987, the Student Association of the College of William and Mary established an award in his honor.

References

Sources

  • McCartney, Martha W. (1977) James City County: Keystone of the Commonwealth; James City County, Virginia; Donning and Company;
  • James City County Virginia official website - history section