William Caruthers (d. 1817), a Lexington merchant, was TJ’s agent in Rockbridge County (Rockbridge Co. Will Book, 5:150–4, Vi microfilm; MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1262n). He and TJ subsequently corresponded about their mutual interest in sheep breeding and various proposals for leasing the lands around the Natural Bridge, including Caruthers’s own proposal for establishing a shot manufactory there in partnership with Philip Thornton.

George Washington was the liberal patron whose gift of one hundred shares in the James River Company in 1796 led to the renaming in 1798 of Lexington’s Liberty Hall Academy, first incorporated in 1782, as the Washington Academy (now Washington and Lee University) (Washington, Papers description begins W. W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, Philander D. Chase, and others, eds., The Papers of George Washington, 1983– , 44 vols.: Colonial Ser., 6 vols.; Confederation Ser., 10 vols.; Pres. Ser., 11 vols.; Retirement Ser., 4 vols. ; Rev. War Ser., 13 vols. description ends , Retirement Ser., 2:236–7, 3:207–9). Caruthers was a founding trustee of the Ann Smith Academy, established in 1807 to educate young ladies and chartered by the legislature on 7 Jan. 1808 (Samuel Shepherd, The Statutes at Large of Virginia, from October Session 1792 to December Session 1806 [1835–36], 3:403–4). Its headmistress and namesake left the school in 1812, but it survived past the Civil War (William W. Pusey, Elusive Aspirations: The History of the Female Academy in Lexington, Virginia [1983]; Ollinger Crenshaw, General Lee’s College: The Rise and Growth of Washington and Lee University [1969], 72–4). Caruthers had had the small fund from the sale of salt petre at the Natural Bridge in his hands for eight years (Caruthers to TJ, 29 July 1801 [MHi]).