Chapter II – ADMINISTRATION, SETTING AND STAFF, 1820-1833
Responsibility for maintaining and directing the newly established Institution* rested with the Trustees of the Baptist Education Society. These ten (later twelve) ministers and laymen included many of the denominational leaders in the state. The first President of the Board, the widely-traveled home missionary, Peter Philanthropos Roots, it will be recalled, was one of the founders of the Society. The clergymen succeeding him for brief terms were John Bostwick of Hartwick, likewise a founder; Joshua Bradley, dynamic pastor of the First Baptist Church of Albany, who later helped to found several seminaries in the Mississippi Valley; and Obed Warren of Morrisville, whose integrity and character gave him much influence in removing the fears and prejudices of many against the institution. Serving later as President were the Reverend Clark Kendrick, one of the chief Baptist leaders in Vermont; and the Elbridge, New York, pastor, Sylvanus Haynes, noted for his paternal friendliness to young preachers. Squire Munro, prominent member of Haynes’s church, a wealthy farmer and land speculator, was the first layman to become President of the Board. Jonathan Olmstead, his successor, whose term was extended from 1831 until he died in 1842, had been host to the group who founded the Society. He took such an important part in the Board’s activities that the Trustees inscribed on his tombstone they erected in the University Cemetery a tribute to “his wise and liberal counsels, and his personal benefactions.”
The Trustees, though ardent in their religion, were essentially conservative and practical, and almost without exception men of limited education. By background and experience they were fitted to preside
* Usually known formally as the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution until 1846 though it had no “official” name.