Chapter IV – THE EXPANDED PROGRAM 1833-1846
The Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution gained recognition as a nursery of religion and learning thanks to the wise planning and heroic labors of its faculty. They became known for scholarly attainments and good teaching as well as for their position and influence in the denomination. By “pressing forward with the ardor of youth to render their course of instruction most efficient,” they achieved a fine reputation for the school throughout the United States. When lack of funds demanded retrenchment in the ’40’s the Board considered replacing, some of the faculty with cheaper and less experienced men. However, such a measure “so threatening to’ the stability and prosperity of the Institution” they prudently tabled in the belief that, “as if is just entering upon the age of manhood, it should not be thrown back … to its former infancy.”*
Seth Spencer Whitman, who had been Professor of Hebrew and Biblical Criticism for six years, left in 1835 and within a few weeks of his departure Thomas Jefferson Conant succeeded him. Member of a prominent Vermont Baptist family, Conant had graduated from Middlebury in 1823 and taught at Columbian, and Waterville (Colby) Colleges. His mastery of the languages of the Old Testament, which he acquired by private study, was to enable him to become one of the leading Biblical scholars and translators ill the country. In 1840 he published a translation from the German of Gesenius’s Hebrew Grammar with the additions of Roediger, which was long the standard text in its field In England arid the’ United States. His wife, a daughter of Jeremiah Chaplin, first president of Colby, was a scholar in her own right. In addition to be bearing and raising ten children she edited a
*Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1842, 8; a843, 9.