A Glebe was a parcel of land granted to a church, revenues from farming which were used to support the priest and church. If this means that the founders of the University partially funded it by selling church properties, this is fascinating; it reminds me of many statements made by Jefferson and the other founders criticizing religion and Christianity in particular. The fact that the board or town saw fit to sell these lands shows that they believed that education is more valuable than religion, and this would have been a relatively new belief in the western world.

It's interesting to think about the fact that these six areas of physics (mechanics, statics, dynamics, pneumatics, acoustics, optics), which were formerly all taught as separate classes, are now generally included in one class. In this time period, we simply knew less about physics; people were still finding the laws of electromagnetism, nothing was properly understood about atoms, and it would still be another century before relativity and quantum mechanics were born. I have to wonder how the work compared to that of today; after all, they clearly spent more time learning about these subjects but knew less about the fundamental explanations.Much of this likely centered around what were practical skills and knowledge for this time period.

While Geography as a subject here is expected, it's interesting that it shows up under Physics-Mathematics. As a physics major interested in geography, I find this interesting; today, geography would definitely be considered more of a social science. Geography does have some pretty complicated math behind it, and this is from well before the age of satellite mapping, so I imagine this class was more about making maps since we were still exploring in this time period.

The idea that the founders wanted to create a mostly secular institution yet still teach some moral lessons from religion is interesting. It is reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson's own personal version of the Bible, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which removed all supernatural or miraculous events from the standard Bible, leaving behind only moral teachings. It is probably influenced by the deistic beliefs of Jefferson and many of the other founders. Now, the University is even more secular, no longer teaching religion-based morals.