p. 37 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

measured speech until his subject roused him to excitement. He had a cautious, involved style in writing which appears in his chief publications, the Annual Reports of the Education Society. He had slight regard for “elegant literature” which he probably regarded as frivolous. Religion was his chief interest and “his library was the common resort for the solution of doubtful theological questions. . . .”

Although Kendrick was fully occupied with his duties as professor and President and as Secretary of the Education Society, he found time to support some of the reforms of the day. He and Hascall were both members of the Madison County Colonization Society, Kendrick the first president. He also belonged to the county temperance society, was one of the Board of Curators of the New York Lyceum, and a  Trustee of Hamilton College. The University of Vermont granted him  an A.M. and Brown University both an A.M. and D.D.

Zenas Morse, A.B., Hamilton College, 1821, an instructor in the Hamilton Academy, assisted Hascall with Latin and Greek when the classes grew too large for him to handle alone in the fall of 1821. This arrangement lasted four years, after which Morse became principal of the Academy, a position he filled capably for many years.

Seth Spencer Whitman, Professor of Languages and Biblical Literature, 1828-1835, had been one of the most promising students of the Seminary. A member of the Class of 1823, he left before graduation at the suggestion of the Executive Committee to complete his studies at Hamilton College. The Committee even agreed to aid in defraying his expenses on condition that he refund them by his services as teacher in  the Seminary. After taking his degree at Hamilton he went to Newton Theological Seminary for three years. On his return, the Executive  Committee expressed their high regard for him by asking him to sit with them and by providing that Hascall should introduce him to the assembled students and that Kendrick should make the prayer after Whitman had delivered his inaugural address.

Whitman’s classmate at Newton, Barnas Sears, who came to the faculty in 1829 as Professor of Languages, was later to achieve a greater national reputation than any other member of the teaching staff in this period. Young, popular, and brilliant, he had a brief pastorate at Hartford, Connecticut, between his graduation from Brown and his professorship at the Institution. In addition to

Comments are closed.