Category Archives: Chapter 2

p. 38 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 38 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

teaching he occupied the pulpit in the village Baptist Church. Following his transfer from languages to theology in 1835, he went to Germany to study at Halle, Leipzig, and Berlin. Less than a year after his return in 1835 he resigned to join the Newton Faculty. Professors, students and townspeople greatly regretted his leaving. He subsequently became President of Newton, Horace Mann’s successor as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, President of Brown, and the first General Agent of the Peabody Fund.

Another young faculty member destined to make a prominent place for himself was Asahel C. Kendrick who succeeded Sears as Professor of Languages. The son of the Rev. Clark Kendrick of Vermont, he had come to Hamilton at the age of thirteen to live with his father’s cousin, Nathaniel, while he prepared for Hamilton College at the Academy. On his graduation from Hamilton in 1831, he became an instructor in the preparatory department of the Institution. After two decades of able teaching he was to continue his career at the University of Rochester.

For a few years in the 1820’s the Executive Committee hired upperclassmen and recent graduates as tutors to assist with the instruction of beginning students. Beriah N. Leach, Class of 1825, was employed while a senior with the understanding that he should have “sabbaths to himself, and … the privilege of attending the theological lectures….” When he left at the end of a year to take a pastorate, his classmate, Chancellor Hartshorn, succeeded him but after a two-year

As the Trustees reviewed the progress of the Institution to 1833, they took courage from the evidence they found that it “had been raised up by special providence of God, amidst the prayers and efforts of his people.” They could point to a widening patronage from churches and friends, an able and self-sacrificing faculty, an extensive campus and substantial buildings, and a growing student enrollment. The latter called for new facilities, and an expanded curriculum, which the Board was prepared to provide in the expectation that increased contributions to the treasury would cover the cost. Both the Trustees and Executive Committee could agree that the Institution had become “too important to the interests of Zion to be neglected and left to wither.”*

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1833, pp.3, 11.

Comments Off on p. 38 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 38

Tagged , ,

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

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on 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 Off on p. 37 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 37

Tagged , ,

p. 36 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 36 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

asked him “to employ himself wholly in the school” He seems at first
to have declined a formal appointment because they tendered it again
a few months later with the request that he “remove to Hamilton, that
he may more fully perform the duties of his office” and with permis
sion for him to supplement his income by supplying in churches on
Sundays. This time he accepted.

Born in 1777 in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he grew up,
Kendrick was the eldest son of a family of nine children. His advanced
education, gained in less than two years once he had decided to
become a preacher, came from resident pastors at Hanover, and
Thetford, Vermont, and Franklin and Boston in Massachusetts. The
best known of the group, perhaps, was Dr. Nathaniel Emmons of
Franklin, who had trained more young ministers than any of his
brother preachers. An arch-Calvinist with a keen analytical mind, he
was shrewd in introducing his students to the pitfalls of rationalism
which he required them to investigate in his well-stocked library and
discuss in written essays. Though Kendrick spent less than three
months with him the unmistakable influence of his teacher was
strengthened by many subsequent conferences. Kendrick next went to
live with Dr. Thomas Baldwin, eminent pastor of the Second Baptist
Church of Boston, who, with Dr. Samuel Stillman of the First Baptist
Church, gave him valuable contacts and instruction.

Kendrick’s interest and qualifications for teaching theology first
appeared shortly before the Education Society was founded when he
took the lead in organizing and conducting a “consociation” of young
ministers of the vicinity for the study of that subject. At their bi-
monthly sessions they read and discussed essays on doctrine which
they had written. Robert Powell, one of the founders of the Society,
was a member of the group.

No teacher at the Seminary in its first years made so strong an
impression on the students as Kendrick. His “gigantic power, both
mental and physical,” his stature of nearly six and a half feet, and his
serious dignity combined with easy graceful manners and gentle
kindness they always remembered. A portrait of him, painted about
1840, emphasizes his high forehead, sharp eyes, long features, and
solemn expression. A slow, profound, and solitary thinker, he seldom
gave vent to his ideas but when he did, it was in deliberate and

Comments Off on p. 36 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 36

p. 35 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 35 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

in a seminary situated in an area recently frontier and drawing many of its students from simple country homes. Born on a Vermont farm near Bennington in 1782, he began “keeping school” at the age of eighteen, meanwhile reading in preparation for entering Middlebury College to which he was admitted in 1803 as a sophomore. At this new and undeveloped institution, founded only three years previously, he earned all his expenses. He was a member of the Philomathesian Society, a secret literary group, and at his graduation in 1806 participated with five of his classmates in “A Dialogue on the Means of Advancing Human Felicity” and also delivered “An Oration on True Greatness.” His own privations and struggles for an education enabled him to appreciate the hardships of many of his students. He stood before them as an example of what they might achieve through dogged perseverance and hard work.

Slightly under six feet, compact and wiry in build, he had blue eyes, light hair, a fair complexion, and symmetrical features. He impressed his students with his energy, simplicity, and devotion to the Institution. They were drawn to him by his cordiality, lack of affectation, and humility. The stories of his directing men building the Cottage Edifice as he sat at the window of West Hall hearing the recitations of a class, or, once the hour was over, leading his students to the stone quarry or the hay field where he took the lead in the work at hand, help to make clear his hold over them. Hascall was not a great scholar-as were few college teachers of the period were-but he was an independent, logical thinker who could express himself in a fresh and direct style. One friend called him a man “of the Doric order:’ His theology, though strongly Calvinistic, differed from Kendrick’s in that he refused to accept the doctrine of Particular Atonement which Kendrick firmly believed. This difference of opinion failed to cloud their close and affectionate relationship.

Hascall and Kendrick were well paired for conducting the affairs of the Institution. Where one was modest, diffident, and almost distrustful of himself, the other was bold and self-possessed but at the same time neither forward nor presumptuous. Kendrick first began teaching in the fall of 1820 when he came over to Hamilton from Eaton three times a week to give lectures on philosophy and theology. Two years later the Executive Committee elected him Professor of Theology and

Comments Off on p. 35 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 35

Tagged , ,

p. 34 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 34 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

carried heavy administrative as well as teaching responsibilities. Though these two senior members were the only ones in the group who served as trustees, other members acted with them on the Executive Committee or “took agencies” for collecting funds. Such an arrangement, which obviated lines of distinction between the administrative and teaching staffs, made for close cooperation in the common cause of education.

At first faculty organization was informal, though there is mention of a set of by-laws in the early ’20’s. In 1830 the Trustees, in place of the Executive Committee, were empowered by the Society to “appoint the Professors, determine their salaries and time of service.” Three years later the Society granted the faculty broader power “to administer in general the internal government of the Seminary” subject to approval by the Board.

As might be expected at a seminary supported by a denomination not entirely cordial to the idea of a trained clergy, faculty salaries were low. During 1822-23 Hascall received $350. The next year $400 became the standard salary for professors and remained so until 1829  when they were granted $500. The average income of college teachers for the period was about equal to that of clergymen. Alfred Bennett, one of the best known Baptist ministers of the state, never received over $400, often only $300, with some of it in produce. However, professors at Auburn Theological Seminary (Presbyterian), Brown, and Amherst earned from $200 to $600 more than Hascall and his  high-minded associates. The latter were reasonably contented with small incomes. Their great purpose was to train as many young men as
possible to become the spiritual leaders of Christians, from Hamilton to Burma.

Hascall’s teaching career started in 1818 when he began to receive young men into his home to study for the ministry. Most of the ten students present at the opening of the Seminary in the ‘brick academy” in 1820 had studied with him privately. His appointment as the first teacher seems to have been tentative, hut in 1822 the Executive Committee “Voted that Brother Daniel Hascall be considered as has long been the design of this Committee, Professor of Languages in this Institution.” From 1828 to 1832 he also taught “Natural Philosophy.”

Hascall’s background and experience fitted him very well for instructing

Comments Off on p. 34 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 34

Tagged , , ,

p. 33 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 33 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Besides the chapel, West Hall contained a lecture room, a library, and studies and sleeping rooms which could accommodate about seventy students, two to the room. Occupants were permitted to paint the walls of their rooms if they wished and furniture from the “stone building on the plain,” which groups and individuals had provided, was transferred to chambers in the new building bearing the names the donors had specified for those in the old one. Since lack of furniture made it possible at first to use less than half of the sleeping rooms, appeals went out for contributions of beds, bedding and other equipment. Outfitting quarters for students cost $50.00.

Extensive renovations have obliterated all traces of the original interior but externally the building is the same as it was in 1827. One observer then wrote that the structure was plain, well designed and constructed, and showed marks of strict economy. Today architects still comment on its simplicity and excellent proportions. In the general exterior design it resembles other college buildings of the period including Painter Hall at Middlebury, Hascall’s Alma Mater.*

Within a week after West Hall was dedicated, Hascall had completed, at a cost of $950, a “large convenient” boarding house, known as the “Cottage Edifice,” and a wood house; both were, of course, necessary complements to the new classroom and dormitory building. The boarding house, which stood between West and the present Alumni Halls, was 48 feet long and 34 feet wide and two stories high. The cellar and kitchen were in the first story, the dining room and living quarters for the steward and his family in the second.

The campus of the 1820’s and 30’s probably was bleak, bare of trees or shrubs, and without landscaping to enhance the natural beauty of the site. A new road down to the present College Street was opened and about ten acres to the north stretching to that highway were purchased. Hascall, acting as superintendent of buildings and grounds, cleared the space around the buildings and enclosed it with a fence. He also removed to the rear of the boarding house an old distillery, presumably once operated by Samuel Payne, for the students to use as a workshop. By 1829 Kendrick could report that the Education Society owned real estate worth over $12,000.

Hascall, Kendrick, and other faculty members to a lesser degree,

* The Trustees of the Hamilton Academy purchased the “building on the plain” for their boys’ department which occupied it until the academy was discontinued in the 1850’s. Hamilton Academy Record Book, Apr. 28, 1827.

Comments Off on p. 33 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 33

Tagged , , , , , ,

p. 32 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 32 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833

the Annual Meeting. Appropriately enough, Stephen Gano, of Providence, at the request of the Executive Committee and on the strong recommendation of Nicholas Brown, gave the sermon, preaching from Isaiah, XXIX, 11, 12, “And the vision of all is become to you as the words of a book that is sealed….” His massive form, majestic appearance and powerful melodious voice held the attention of his hearers. Hascall, who followed him with an address “embracing a view of the providence of God which had conducted the Institution to its present elevation,” must have felt triumphant and at the same time humble as he related what had been achieved. Choral music of a “superior style” was interspersed throughout the program. A spirit of thanksgiving and devotion pervaded the audience as they realized what Hascall and his co-workers had accomplished. At noon members  of the Education Society attended a dinner provided for them by the Executive Committee and in the afternoon were present at a meeting of the newly formed Society of Alumni and Friends, at which Gerrit Smith, the First Vice President, presided.

Commencement the next day tested the strength and seating capacity of the chapel. It was estimated that between two and three thousand people ‘packed themselves in for the occasion. Since the floors held, there was no fear of their giving way in the future. One observer described the room as follows:

The chapel occupies part of the third and fourth stories, with an arched ceiling similar to a well furnished meeting house. The whole of the  fourth story is embraced in the chapel, and forms the gallery except about twenty feet on the west end, which is appropriated to rooms. The center room about twenty feet square, is designed for philosophical apparatus, and opens by folding doors on to the stage, or west gallery of the chapel, and forms, when opened, an admirable platform for the trustees and faculty to occupy at commencement. That part of the gallery appropriated to the stage is about 8 feet wide perhaps, and  is finished with a railing in front, and commands a full view of the audience in the galleries, and also in the pit. That part of the chapel, which we call the pits the area between the galleries formed by a continuation of the panels, or walls in front of the galleries, down to the floor of the third story, excluding all that part of the third story under the galleries. This pit has seats ascending, with a platform and  desk at one end, sufficiently large for all ordinary occasions of worship. It strikes one as templum in templo.*

* New York Baptist Register, June 16, 1827.

Comments Off on p. 32 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 32

Tagged , ,

West Hall completed (p. 31)

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on West Hall completed (p. 31)
West Hall.
West Hall

depression such as that on a cold January day in 1827 when he wrote to his friend and counsellor, Nathaniel Kendrick, then at Hartford, Connecticut, on an “agency.” Hascall reported that he had returned from a fundraising trip with little to show for his efforts. Though the building was progressing, he had difficulty in keeping the workmen in materials since the sawmills were shut down. Beset by family worries and in doubt as to whether he should continue as pastor, he continued, “I find myself in a strait place and no one to advise me in your absence. I shall not abandon the work of building until it is finished; unless Special Providence requires it.” This letter, one of the most human in the University’s archives, lights up with a warm glow the intimate relationship between these two men to whose herculean labors the Institution owed so much.*

Hascall’s experience in putting up the “building on the plain” must have been helpful when he came to erect West Hall. According to tradition, he had the gray limestone for the walls quarried from the  hill above the old golf course. Construction progressed so well that on May 28, 1827, a year before the contract stipulated, he turned over the completed building to the Executive Committee.

Formal dedication of the structure came on June 5th as part of the exercises of the week of “public examinations,” Commencement, and

* Daniel Hascall, to Nathaniel Kendrick, Hartford, Conn., Jan. 15, 1827.

Comments Off on West Hall completed (p. 31)

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 31, timeline

Tagged ,

p. 30 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 30 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833

its prospects. Sometime later, when the building was partially completed, Brown is said to have remarked to Gano at the end of a prayer meeting: “I have had no enjoyment of the meeting. My mind has been much exercised about Hamilton. I do not know but I have some duty there. I wish you would go and see what they are doing; and ascertain if they are in special need of assistance.” Hascall was on the point of discharging the workmen because they had no money to pay them. In this crisis, the story goes, he and his wife resorted to prayer. Within a few days Gano arrived to discover that Brown’s premonition had been correct and on his return Brown’s check was forthcoming.*

The hero of the building of West Hall, as the structure is now designated, was the indefatigable Daniel Hascall.  He not only drew the plans and supervised the workmen but, at the same time, collected nearly the whole cost of the building, contributed one hundred dollars himself, carried his teaching load, ran the Payne farm, boarded students, and served as pastor of the local church. Possessing boundless energy and unselfishness, and gifted with a sagacity for anticipating problems and a practical approach for meeting them, he was the one man who could have built West Hall in those years when the Institution had so great a struggle for existence. His task was lightened somewhat by his straightforward honesty, which won him such confidence that, even though he became involved in large expenditures for the Seminary, his creditors refrained from troubling him.

Hascall’s character and devotion are revealed in some degree by a story told of his first meeting with a new student when the building was going up. On arriving in Hamilton the student stopped at Hascall’s home, a “free inn for all newcomers,” where in his host’s absence he was hospitably entertained by his wife, Sophia, long remembered as “The Students’ Friend.” About midnight the sleeping household was awakened by Hascall’s return in a driving rain. The student, asked to dress and come downstairs, was astonished to find a man in a slouch hat and old overcoat, thoroughly drenched and dripping from head to foot, who greeted him pleasantly and politely asked him to help in unloading a quantity of glass for the new building which he had brought from Utica. This was the great professor of whom the awestruck student had heard so much.

Hascall’s energy and activity did not prevent his having moments of

* The Young Minister’s Friend, I, (Feb., 1844), 5.

Comments Off on p. 30 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 30

p. 29 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 29 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833
Mrs. Samuel Payne, A0999-3, p29

Deacon Payne seems to have acquired a moderate amount of wealth in agriculture. He took a rather active part in the political life of the county and twice sat in the State Assembly. He belonged to the conservative wing of the Democratic-Republican party and, his solid figure and dignified presence must have been well known at caucuses and conventions. For many years he ‘was a Justice of the Peace and in 1832 a Presidential Elector. Mrs. Payne, a kind and pious woman, who made her home a place where the young men of the Institution could find understanding and cheer, was known as “the Students’ Mother.” In the early years before rooms were available in the “building on the plain,” students lived with the Paynes. Without children of their own, they gave to the school the love and affection they would normally have bestowed on a family.

The choice of a site for the new building, now to be on the Payne farm, the Executive Committee referred to a committee of six. Hascall, whose plan for the structure they had already approved, served as a member. He had represented the Institution at a meeting of the Board of the now auxiliary New York Baptist Theological Seminary in New York City whose members raised $2,000 by their own efforts for the building and later, when additional funds were needed, borrowed $1,000 more at 7 percent interest.

A gift of $1,000 from Nicholas Brown proved another important addition to the building fund. Brown’s pastor, the Rev. Stephen Gano of the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, returned from a visit to Hamilton in 1825 enthusiastic about the Seminary and

Comments Off on p. 29 – Administration, setting, and staff, 1820-1833

Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 29

Tagged , , ,