became the policy of the Society its resources were opened up for the Institution and Clark Kendrick was made its chief agent in Vermont. His efforts in collecting funds and selecting students made his death in 1824 a severe blow to the struggling Board and Executive Committee. Assistance from the Baptists of the Green Mountain State continued until 1830 when they formed themselves into a branch of the Northern Baptist Education Society (originally the Massachusetts Baptist Education Society) because many of their young men were under its patronage. What interest in education remained was diverted into founding denominational academies within the state.
The Baptists of Connecticut, too, participated in the movement to provide an educated ministry and in 1818 founded an education society. Noting the possibilities of tapping resources in this quarter as they had done in Vermont, the New York society sent Joel W. Clark and Jonathan Olmstead to Connecticut in 1822. They bore a diplomatic letter of introduction and were authorized to broach the question of a union of forces behind the Hamilton institution. A few months later the Connecticut society by a unanimous vote agreed to cooperate. The relationship lasted until 1827 or 1828 when “with friendly dispositions and from local considerations of convenience” the Connecticut society decided to send no more students or funds to Hamilton. Henceforth their energies were devoted to establishing their own academy and assisting the Northern Baptist Education Society.
Since the Executive Committee had come to believe by 1831 that New York State alone was large and prosperous enough to maintain the Seminary, they agreed not to interfere with the plan of the Northern Baptist Education Society to extend her auxiliaries in New England. The support which the Institution had found among Baptists of the Empire State, especially those of New York City, made it possible for the Committee to come to this decision.
The earliest contact between officers of the Institution and metropolitan Baptists seems to have been in 1820 when Joel W. Clark and Elon Galusha went to New York to solicit books for the library. Their visit prepared the ground for discussing the possibility of consolidating the New York Baptist .Theological Seminary, which was not proving a success, with the school at Hamilton. After their return to Hamilton, Kendrick took up the question in a letter to the Board of the New York Institution. He pointed out the superior benefits of a seminary in the