Thomas J. Wertenbaker

Grandfather Wertenbaker built three houses on his property located between the university campus and Charlottesville's town center, which was developed into the Wertland Street Historic District after his death.

The Library of Virginia has made available online several notes by lawyer and author Samuel Bassett French, who died before completing a planned biographical dictionary, about members of his family, including this man's birth near Milton outside of Charlottesville, the furthest navigable point on the James River, and from where bateaux conveyed tobacco downriver to Richmond.

Wertenbaker interrupted those studies in 1900-1901 to teach at St. Matthew's School in Dobbs Ferry, New York before returning to the University of Virginia and receiving Bachelor's and Master's degrees in 1902.

He became an instructor in the University of Virginia's history department in 1909 and completed his thesis and received his PhD degree the following year.

[1] Wertenbaker was considered one of the "Progressive School" of American historians, as were Charles and Mary Beard, James Truslow Adams and Vernon Louis Parrington.

Wertenbaker regarded the three volumes of The Founding of American Civilization as his greatest work, but others criticized it for basing theories on little evidence.