Robert Saunders, Jr.

Ancestry The first of the Saunders family is thought to have moved to Virginia in the late Seventeenth century. During this time, Robert Saunders Jr.'s great-great-great-grandfather John Saunders (died c. February 1700) accumulated large amounts of property–both land and slaves–along the York River in York County.

Biography Robert Saunders Jr. was born January 25, 1805, to Robert Saunders (born 1761) and his second wife Susannah Jones.

On June 17, 1828, Saunders married Lucy Burwell Page, daughter of John Page, the former Virginia Governor and congressman of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Saunders was elected professor of mathematics at the College of William & Mary in 1833 and served in this position until 1848. Saunders is notable as he was the sole president of the college not to reside in the President's House during his presidency, instead electing to remain in his residence along the Palace Green near the former site of the Governor's Palace.

Saunders's time as President of the college was fraught with divisiveness and a general decline in the college's wellbeing. John Millington and other professors urged Saunders to move the college to Richmond, but Saunders's support for such an action and his inability to stabilize the college led to the forced resignation of Saunders and nearly every professor. Staunch slavery advocate Nathaniel Beverly Tucker of the Law School was spared this fate as his politics secured favor with the Board of Visitors.

After leaving the college, Saunders was elected to the Virginia state senate in 1852, representing Williamsburg for three two-year terms. Robert Saunders Jr. died in either 1868