Charles Minor

Charles Minor, born November 4, 1810, was from Louisa County, Virginia. As did a number of the other signers, he attended multiple sessions at the University of Virginia but took a year off in the middle.  He started in the 1829-1830 session and finished in 1833-1834, taking all of the courses offered during that time.1 One of Dr. Minor’s brothers, John Barbee, was a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia for half a century.2

The 1840 census indicates that Dr. Minor was in a household that included one other professional and a farmer. There were a total of nine slaves, three under the age of ten.3 Dr. Minor was elected to the Christ Church vestry in 1842.4 His household in the 1850 census consisted of his wife, seven children with the last name Minor, and three young women, each with different last names. The two youngest of the three women attended school. He is also credited with owning real estate valued at $9,000.5 In addition to practicing medicine, Dr. Minor was principal of a boarding school in the Delavan Hotel building in town and then teacher and principal at a classical school at Brookhill, a property built circa 1815 north of town on the Rivanna River in Albemarle County and which he purchased in 1857.6 With the assistance of University of Virginia graduates, the school functioned for several years until the Civil War erupted.7 In December 1861, eight months after the outbreak of the war, Dr. Minor died.8 His wife, Lucy Walker Minor, outlived him by nearly 20 years. Her obituary states she was the mother of 13 children, nine of whom lived to adulthood.9

  1. University of Virginia, Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University of Virginia (1829-1830 – 1833-1834). [↩]
  2. University of Virginia, Catalogue (1845-1846 – 1895-1896). [↩]
  3. U.S. Federal Census, 1840. [↩]
  4. Jennie Thornley Grayson, “Old Christ Church, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1826-1895,”Papers of the Albemarle County Historical Society 8 (1947-1948): 53. [↩]
  5. U.S. Census: Albemarle, Virginia, 1850, accessed 29 March 2011. [↩]
  6. Fillmore Norfleet, “A Visit to the University in 1854: Two Letters from Mrs. Joseph Prentis, Jr.” The Magazine of Albemarle County History 35-36 (1977-1978): 167; Mary Rawlings, Ante-bellum Albemarle, Albemarle County, Virginia Historical Sketches (Charlottesville, Virginia: The Peoples National Bank, 1935), 42; Peel Family Information, accessed 29 March 2011; K. Edward Lay, The Architecture of Jefferson Country, Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 132. [↩]
  7. Peel Family Information. [↩]
  8. Peel Family Information. [↩]
  9. Obituary Notice of Lucy Walker Minor (Mrs. Charles Minor), Box 53, Papers of the Minor and Wilson Family, Accession #38-602, 3750, 3750-a, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. [↩]