Governor Paca Lays the Cornerstone of the First Washington College Building By M. Paul Roche

Oil on canvas
1939

This large mural was commissioned by college president Gilbert W. Mead and completed by Irish-born Baltimore printmaker and painter M. Paul Roche in 1939. In 1940 it was hung in the college library, now Bunting Hall which houses the president’s office. It was accompanied by another large mural by Roche depicting George Washington’s only visit to the college. The painting is a portrayal of the ceremonious laying of the college’s first building’s cornerstone in 1783.

Rev. Dr. Smith, the college’s founder, described the event in a 1784 published record, An Account of Washington College in the State of Maryland. He describes the scene as “Foundation stone was laid, with the proper ceremony, by his Excellency Governor Paca.” Yet 156 years later, Roche chose to depict Paca as only instructing an enslaved man, while that man lays the cornerstone in the painting. Additionally, in President Mead’s notes to Roche and in the official title given to the painting by the college, the description of a scene showing an enslaved man laying the stone is still described as “Governor William Paca, who laid the cornerstone” or “Governor Paca Lays Cornerstone.”

It is very possible that an enslaved man, or men, could have been who physically laid the stone. But this involvement of an enslaved person was not in the 1784 published description. With no historical obligation to do so, why was this added to the scene in 1939? In a segregated community at a white only southern college, why choose slavery as an overt focal point in a massive celebratory mural for the college’s library?