Author Archives: franny

p. 24 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-183

Posted on April 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Filston Hall, p024

 Filston Hall, ancestral home of Colgate family near Sevenoaks, Kent, England

almost exclusively to “reform movements” within his own denomination or to those in which Baptists had a direct interest, such as Bible translation. Annually he gave a tenth or more of his income to the church and other charities.

Genuinely concerned for the welfare of the Seminary at Hamilton, Deacon Colgate cultivated in other people an interest in the institution. His wife, Mary, and Sarah, his daughter, assisted the women’s auxiliary societies of New York to collect money for the treasury and furnishings for student rooms. His sons, James B. and Samuel, after their father’s death in 1857, were to carry on nobly the family tradition in education which he had begun. The hospitable Colgate home was the usual stopping place for Kendrick, Hascall, and other Hamilton Baptists when they were in New York. The shrewd advice which their host must have given them on denominational and financial questions as well as the credit he often extended to the harried Treasurer of the Education Society made William Colgate its preeminent patron.

The Institution’s financial history resembles that of most early American colleges which frequently ran deficits and were enabled to continue their work only through heroic sacrifices by their officers, faculties,

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 24

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p. 23 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on April 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

William Colgate, p23

William Colgate

 

one of the most active members of the New York City board in bringing about the union of the two institutions. A solid, substantial, kindly, and devout businessman, not unlike Jonathan Olmstead or Seneca Burchard, he was to become as influential as they in the life of the Institution. Born in England in 1783, the eldest of five sons, he had been brought to Maryland at the age of twelve when his father, Robert Colgate, was forced to flee with his family from his home, Filston Farm, near Sevenoaks, in Kent, because, according to family tradition, he had agitated for parliamentary reform.


View Filston Hall in a larger map

When William Colgate was seventeen he entered the soap and candle business in Baltimore, but later moved to New York where in 1806 he opened his own shop in Dutch Street. As a result of his almost undisputed control of the soap and candle market during the War of 1812 he accumulated a large fortune. Soon after establishing his business he joined the First Baptist Church, a step which launched his long career as an active and outstanding churchman. He was deeply interested in Baptist foreign missions, Sunday schools, and ministerial education. Unlike many other wealthy philanthropists of the period, Deacon Colgate limited himself

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 23

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p. 22 – Administration, Setting, and Staff, 1820-1833

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

country, especially for “young men from the interior, bro’t up to hard labour; without the advantages of a common school education” and unaccustomed to city ways and often desperately poor. The opportunities at Hamilton for them to supply “destitute churches” on Sundays he stressed as valuable in providing preaching experience and a small financial return. He tactfully called attention to arrangements for cooperation already worked out with the Vermont education society and stated, “If you deem this method calculated to promote the general interest of our common cause … you will accept the assurances of a firm disposition on our part, to enter cordially into such a connection [with you] and be fellow helpers in the same good work.”*

Negotiations dragged on till March 24, 1823, when the Trustees of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary, giving up the idea of maintaining their own school, voted that it was “expedient to send to the Seminary at Hamilton such an annual sum as may be conveniently Spared and such students as may to this board appear Expedient.” Within a month they turned over to agent Joel W. Clark $350 and soon after shipped $100 worth of books to Hamilton. Their first student, William G. Miller, “a member in good standing of the Abyssinian Church,” joined the Class of 1826. Henceforth, the New York Baptist Theological Seminary was a paper organization only, its sole purpose being to assist the Hamilton institution. The Board justified abandoning their own school on the ground of inadequate funds, but the unfailing help which they and other Baptists in New York City, now released from supporting a strictly local enterprise, were to give to the up-state seminary was many times to save it from ruin.** When the Education Society had been chartered in 1819 the New Yorkers had regarded it as a rival The Rev. John Stanford had said, “‘I wonder if the people away off in the woods, a hundred miles west of Albany, are so silly as to suppose that young men licensed [to preach] in the city of New York would think of going away there to obtain an education.” ***But four years later he had changed his opinion.

William Colgate, a wealthy soapmaker and philanthropist, had been

* Baptist Education Society, Executive Committee, to New York Baptist Theo-
logical Seminary, Board, July 29, 1820.

** New York Baptist Theological Seminary, Record Book, 1813-48, passim.

*** New York Baptist Register, July 27, 1848.

 

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 22

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p. 21 – Administration, Setting, and Staff, 1820-1833

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

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

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 21

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p. 20 – Administration, Setting, and Staff, 1820-1833

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

philanthropist, Gerrit Smith, gave 10,000 feet of seasoned pine boards, 20 bushels of wheat, and $25.00 worth of “furnace ware.” Kendrick, Olmstead and Galusha on a trip to Albany obtained $20.00 from Governor DeWitt Clinton, $10.00 from Lieutenant-Governor John Tayler, and $2.50 from Chancellor James Kent. On commencement day, 1823, the Reverend Calvin Philleo of Westmoreland; a Trustee, gave 150 acres of military bounty land in Illinois. The best the Baptist Triennial Convention could do for the Institution, however, was to wish for its work “the blessings of heaven” because the interests of the national organization were centered in Columbian College, in Washington. Nonetheless, favorable sentiments of any kind must have been appreciated by Kendrick and other officers, who were always quick to note the state of public opinion towards the Seminary.

In areas where Baptists took kindly to their cause; the agents formed auxiliary or: branch societies to act as local, fund-collecting agencies for the parent society in Hamilton. This practice, then in common use for raising money for home and foreign missions, proved a convenient method for combining many small contributions into substantial sums. The women’s’ auxiliary’ societies were especially valuable’ because many of the members who were unable to give money contributed through these organizations the products of their spinning wheels, looms, knitting needles, and kitchens.

From 1820 to 1830 Vermont was an important reservoir of funds and students. The Corresponding Letter oil ministerial education sent out by the Boston Association in 1816, which had stirred Baptists of New York State to action, met with a similar response in Vermont. Here also an education society was founded, its constitution in many respects resembling those of the Massachusetts and New York societies. However, provision had been made in it for cooperation with other organizations with the same objectives.

When the Executive Committee of the New York society learned of the existence of the Vermont group they foresaw competition with it in the eastern counties of the Empire State. A correspondence between the two potential rivals led to Kendrick’s being sent to discuss matters with the president of the Vermont society, his cousin, the Reverend Clark Kendrick, and with other members of the board. These he found cordially disposed to cooperate with the New York State organization rather than found a school to compete with it. When their views

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 20

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First issue of New York Baptist Register (p. 19)

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

and his brother editors announced their support of the Institution, a policy which their successor, Alexander M. Beebee, steadily maintained for thirty years after he took over the paper in 1825. Since the periodical was widely read, its continued assistance was a valuable asset.

The Register prepared the churches for visits from agents of the Society who collected contributions and testified to the genuine piety and purpose of the Seminary. The Executive Committee had stated in 1820:

There remains no doubt but a liberal patronage will be afforded this Institution, from the flourishing region of the country bounded east by the Green Mountains, west by the Niagara River, north by Lake Ontario and the river St. Lawrence, including, perhaps, some portion of Pennsylvania on the south. Within these limits are nearly five hundred Baptist churches; about three hundred of which are in the state of New York, west of the Hudson River. But a small number of these churches have been visited, or even become acquainted with this Society.*

The contacts the agents made not only produced a large part of the annual income but also won over many Baptists hostile to the training of ministers. When the needs of the Seminary required special exertions, and that was fairly regularly, the Trustees appointed full-time paid agents. Among the most successful were Joel W. Clark and Elon Galusha. Occasionally, friends of the Institution were induced to make collections in their own areas and often Kendrick, Hascall, or other faculty members “accepted an agency.”

The agents received donations of goods as well as money; and in their reports are found listed such items as cloth, articles of clothing for students, chairs, a saddle, a thermometer, a bed, and stoves. Some could be used and others sold. Contributions of food, such as an 18-pound cheese, a bushel and a half of dried apples or 565 pounds of pork, valued at $33.90, could be added to the larder of the boarding house or sold to merchants. The Reverend Spencer H. Cone, prominent Baptist preacher of New York City, sent 42 copies of his edition of Jones’ Church History to be sold for $219.50; he agreed to give a quarter of that amount to the Institution. General Abner Forbes, member of the Vermont legislature, donated 60 merino sheep including “one good size full blooded Merino buck.” The wealthy Peterboro

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1820, p. 6.

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 19, timeline

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p. 18 – Administration, Setting, And Staff, 1820-1833

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

In addition to Kendrick, Clark, Olmstead, and Daniel Hascall, the personnel of the Committee included Elon Galusha, John Peck, and Seneca B. Burchard. Galusha, son of Jonas Galusha, a former governor of Vermont, was making a reputation at Whitesboro as one of the most eloquent Baptist preachers in the State. He was later to figure prominently in the antislavery controversy which would split the denomination in the ‘forties. “Father Peck,” the greatly loved and benign pastor of the Cazenovia church, subsequently became well known as a far-ranging agent for home and foreign missions. Burchard, one of the most important of the stalwart laymen intimately associated with the Institution, left a record of service matching that of Olmstead. A newly appointed faculty member in a confidential letter described Burchard and Olmstead as “two very grave and sober and considerate and economical Deacons. They are shrewd and judicious men, however, and are perhaps the fairest representation of the whole Bap. Community with whom we have to do.”*

The high point in the year was the Society’s Annual Meeting,usually held, the first week in June. The date was fitted into the schedule of “public examinations” of the students and the “public exercises” of the juniors and seniors. At this time the officers of the Society brought together all those interested in the Institution. The procedure on these occasions resembled that of the meetings of Baptist associations with which Kendrick and his associates were familiar. A sermon by a well-known preacher selected long in advance opened the program and no doubt attracted a crowd of rapt listeners who, it was hoped, would stay through the remainder and really more important part of the meeting. From the various reports then submitted they learned of the year’s achievements and the problems and hopes for the future. The last item of business was the election of Trustees, who in turn immediately chose their officers.

With the exception of the first two, all meetings convened in Hamilton, probably at the Baptist meeting house until the Society had halls of sufficient size in its own buildings. The Reports of the occasions, which were prepared almost entirely by Kendrick, constitute one of the most enlightening sources for the history of the Institution. Announcements and news about the Seminary also appeared in the New York Baptist Register, the State organ of the denomination published at Utica. In the first issue, February 20, 1824, Elon Galusha

* Joel S. Bacon to George W. Eaton, Georgetown, Ky., Aug. 28, 1833.

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 18

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p. 17 – Administration, Setting, And Staff, 1820-1833

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

the title only a year, though he performed practically all the duties
associated with the office until his death in 1848.*

President Nathaniel Kendrick, p8, p17

 

In meeting the day-to-day and frequently burdensome problems,
Kendrick was assisted by the five-man Executive Committee chosen
annually by the Trustees. Most of them lived in Hamilton and often
were members of the Board. Their recorded activities ranged from
voting that students who chewed tobacco should provide themselves
with, “spit boxes” to arranging for faculty salaries.

* Baptist Education Society, Board of Trustees, Minutes, 1834-41, Feb. 8, Aug.18, 1836.

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 17

Nathaniel Kendrick named President of the Institution (p. 16)

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

over the Seminary and to present its needs to the rank and file of Baptists, whose outlook on life they understood and usually shared. The laymen brought to the deliberations contacts in business, politics and agriculture which proved helpful in deciding many more or less secular questions relating to the Institution. Nearly all the Trustees lived within a fifty-mile radius of Hamilton, an essential arrangement if they were to travel to meetings over deeply rutted or snowbound roads.

Joel W. Clark, minister at Waterville, and Dr. Charles Babcock, New Hartford physician, were the first Secretaries of the Board. Their successor, Nathaniel Kendrick, who served from 1819 to 1848, developed the office into the most influential and responsible in the Society. His vigorous personality, his knowledge of the Seminary’s immediate problems, his extensive correspondence with Baptists throughout the country and his high standing in the denomination where he was an officer of the Triennial Convention and the Home Mission Society, made him the dominant man in the organization. “He  ruled in every position, not with an arbitrary power, but by natural authority,” one associate remembered.*

Like many other American colleges of the day, this school had found in Kendrick a leader able to unite the forces which had given rise to the Institution and fashion them steadily in such a way as to achieve a lasting result. He was the architect who shaped most of the foundations and also one of the builders who gave the edifice permanent form. His preeminent quality, “practical wisdom,” kept him from rash experiments. Reluctant to accept innovations, he yielded gracefully when outvoted by the other Trustees. Though a man of strong emotions, he had so disciplined himself that a slight compression of the lips or a glance of his eye were often the only traces. His dignity, which a thoughtful kindness mellowed, assured him an involuntary deference wherever he went.

Formal recognition of Kendrick’s leadership came in 1836 when at the request of the faculty “that their respected and reverend brother Nathaniel Kendrick, be recognized by the Board of Trustees as the President of the Institution,” the Trustees unanimously elected him to that office. He hesitatingly accepted the honor and seems to have held

* Philetus B. Spear, Class of 1836, Spear MS., 1.

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 16, timeline

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p. 15 – Administration, Setting and Staff, 1820-1833

Posted on March 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

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.

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 15

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