Description
A panoramic pencil drawing by James Austin Graham depicts Williamsburg from the south. Cows lie in the foreground, at left, while the Wren Building at the College of William and Mary, with its two Gothic towers, is visible at center. The building, constructed between 1695 and 1700, helps date the image. The towers were added only after a fire in 1859 and not replaced after another fire destroyed them in 1862. Graham, an inmate at the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, made this drawing from the hospitals grounds, south of Francis Street, in Williamsburg. Graham had been declared insane in 1855 after he opened fire in a Wytheville barroom, killing one man and wounding several others. He died at the hospital in 1878. This is Grahams only known drawing.
