CHAPTER XXI.
An ACT to vest Certain Escheated Lands in the County of Kentuckey (Kentucky) in Trustees for a Public School.
Approved by the Virginia General Assembly in May 1780
(Note: The Public School benefiting from this Act was Transylvania Seminary.)
WHEREAS it is represented to the general assembly, that there are certain lands within the county of Kentuckey formerly belonging to British subjects, not yet sold under the law of escheats and forfeitures, which might at a future day be a valuable fund for the maintenance and education of youth, and it being the interest of this commonwealth always to promote and encourage every design which may tend to the improvement of the mind and the diffusion of useful knowledge, even among its most remote citizens, whose situation a barbarous neighbourhood and a savage intercourse might otherwise render unfriendly to science:
BE IT THEREFORE ENACTED, That eight thousand acres of land, within the said county of Kentuckey, late the property of Robert McKenzie, Henry Collins, and Alexander McKie, be, and the same are hereby vested in William Fleming, William Christian, John Todd, Stephen Trigg, Benjamin Logan, John Floyd, John May, Levi Todd, John Cowan, George Meriwether, John Cobbs, George Thomson, and Edmund Taylor, trustees, as a free donation from this commonwealth for the purpose of a publick school, or seminary of learning, to be erected within the said county as soon as the circumstances of the county and the state of its funds will admit, and for no other use or purpose whatsoever: Saving and reserving to the said Robert McKenzie, Henry Collins, and Alexander McKee, and every of them, and all and every person or persons claiming under them, or either of them, all right and interest to the above mentioned lands, or any part thereof to which they may be by law entitled, and of which they shall in due time avail themselves, any thing herein contained to the contrary notwithstanding.
REF: “The Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia”, Volume X, Edited by William Waller Hening, 1822, pages 287-288.