Chapter IX – ADMINISTRATION, FACULTY, AND INSTRUCTION IN THE DODGE ERA
Ebenezer Dodge, President of Madison University, and James B. Colgate, President of its Board of Trustees, were the dominant figures in its development from 1869 to 1890. They were easy yoke-fellows as they worked and counseled together for its advancement. Dodge was fifty at the beginning of the period and Colgate fifty-one. Their families had been on terms of intimate friendship since the 1840’s when Dodge was pastor, first at New Hampton and then New London, New Hampshire; the latter was the home of the Colbys, Mrs. Colgate’s family. Dodge was a welcome guest at Glenwood, the Colgate estate overlooking the Hudson at Yonkers, and his host, of course, always stayed at the President’s House when he made his annual visits to the campus at commencement. Colgate confided to his journal soon after Dodge’s death in 1890, I had no friend like him outside my family,
and again, “His entering my home was always a joy & when he left it, it was a Regret to all… his great & grand thoughts touched my nature and always after his leaving me I felt myself a better man & my home enriched by his presence.”
It was singularly appropriate that Mr. Colgate’s daughter, Mary, when she gave the chapel in her father’s memory nearly a generation later, Should provide two marble plaques to commemorate him ,and his co-laborer and friend.
Dr. Dodge’s administration was to a large extent the reflection of his own personality, perhaps too much so, though he was devoid of ambition, self-importance or self-assertion. His role was somewhat that of a pastor who exercised his responsibility toward his people, not in a dictatorial fashion but in such a way that there could be no uncertainty as to his views or wishes. His quick temper, which he almost invariably kept in control, was well known and on occasion he could act swiftly