Category Archives: Chapter 3

p. 56 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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Alumni and Friends, doubtless one of the first of its kind in the United States. One of its primary objects was fund raising. Any person could belong by paying  an annual membership of $10.00 or a life membership fee of $50.00. The founders of the organization hoped that, when ministers felt unable to contribute either sum, their churches would contribute for them. Within a year the association had collected $170. Its annual meetings held during commencement” week were occasions for renewing old ties to the Institution and for learning of its, prospects and needs.

By 1833 careful nurture by the faculty and officers of the Education Society had developed the project which the Thirteen Men had initiated into a “school of the prophets” which successfully met the educational standards of the time. The introduction of a four-year college course represented a substantial achievement. Growth had come in response to inward zeal and outward need and had won denominational approval. The Institution’s high-minded, hard-working students showed themselves after graduation well’ prepared to serve their generation. A good foundation had been laid for the advance of the next two decades.

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p. 55 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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Jonathan Wade, p55, image taken from the First Half Century of Madison University

Eugenio Kincaid, p55

books in them, edited Adoniram Judson’s noted Burmese dictionary, and compiled a Karen dictionary which he hoped would equal Judson’s in scope and value. Eugenio Kincaid, Wade’s classmate and fellow worker, achieved a reputation nearly comparable to Wade’s. He became so well known for his tact and ability that the Burmese king made him his diplomatic agent at Washington in 1856. He was also a successful fund-raiser for the institution at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, which was to become Bucknell University. A third member of the Class of 1822, John Glazier Steams, deserves notice as a leader among New York Baptists and a writer on anti-Masonry and church polity.

Alumni of later classes who should be mentioned in passing include: John Newton Brown, 1823, prominent New Hampshire pastor and educational secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society; Pharcellus Church, 1824, Rochester minister, author, and editor of important denominational journals; Jacob Knapp, 1824, well-known evangelist and indirectly father of Washingtonian temperance move­ment; and Jabez Swan, 1827 who was almost as renowned as Knapp for his work as a revivalist. William Dean, Grover S. Comstock, Hosea Howard and Justis H. Vinton, all of the Class of 1833, and Samuel S. Day, Class of 1836, were celebrated missionaries in the Far East.

Professor Hascall, John G. Stearns, and a few others, at a meeting in Utica in 1825, organized the Institution’s graduates into the Society of

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p. 54 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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of Inquiry, each maintained an existence independent of it. In addition to these groups there grew up on the campus the ephemeral Gamma Phi and Lyceum Societies and the relatively permanent Musical Society; little is known of the first two; the third, which existed as early as 1832, fostered vocal music and sang at commencements.

Commencement week included not only the graduation ceremony but also oral public examinations of the various classes. Immediately following the examinations came the “exercises” or “exhibitions” at which juniors and seniors delivered orations. The part of the program given over to the seniors, however, was technically the commencement. The week’s activities gave the officers an opportunity to show something of the work of the Institution and at the same time provided students who were graduating a chance to make useful contacts with denomi­national leaders who might attend. Even though no class had completed the course in June 1821, “public exercises” were held so that friends of the school could see and hear its students at the end of the first year’s work. The program consisted of fifteen orations, all on religious subjects, including one in Latin and one in Greek.

Arrangements for the commencement of 1822 set precedents which were followed rather generally until students were to be graduated from the collegiate department in the middle 1830’s. The newspapers of the vicinity were notified of the week’s program, a public dinner planned, parchment diplomas printed, a procession provided for, and Jonathan Olmstead appointed marshall. Probably this commencement and all those before 1827 were held in the Baptist meeting house. Concluding the 1822 program was an “Address to the Class-By the Professor,” identified as Kendrick since he usually delivered a kind of baccalaureate sermon to subsequent graduating classes. Alumni remembered long afterward the sound advice and fatherly admonition packed into them. Nor did they forget tearful farewells as they went their separate ways once the ceremony was over.

Of the 110 men who had finished the course in the Seminary by June 1833 nearly all had entered the ministry. Nine became foreign missionaries and probably most of the others at some time in their careers preached in the sparsely settled parts of the United States. In any survey of these alumni Jonathan Wade stands out. His fame as a missionary rested not only on his preaching but on his scholarly efforts. He reduced several Burmese dialects to written languages, wrote

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p. 53 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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topic and presented its report at the monthly meeting. Topics ranged from the Burmese missions, Siam, and India to American slavery and the “moral condition” of France. The extensive missionary correspondence of the society and its library supplied a large amount of data for the reports.

The Society for Inquiry, though not ostensibly founded through the influence of the famous Andover society of the same name, which had helped to establish similar groups in American colleges,” nevertheless maintained an active correspondence with these groups. Alike in aims, organization, and procedures, they represent an important phase of the widespread and fervent missionary spirit of the age.

Aside from Wade and Kincaid, only one student had avowed his intention of “preaching the gospel to the heathen” despite the campus interest in missions, In October 1831, however, five disclosed to each other that they too wanted to go to the foreign fields. William Dean, Class of 1833, destined to a great career in China, had opened his heart to his roommate, Grover S. Comstock, also of the Class of 1833, and discovered that he likewise contemplated a similar step. When they found three other students who shared their conviction, they invited them to their room in the northwest corner of the second story of West Hall where each “was requested to relate his exercises.” A week later they organized themselves into the Eastern Association and invited” any person desiring to engage in foreign missionary labors” to join, provided all the members approved.

The purpose of the organization was not only to discuss questions of common interest, but also to steel the members against the influences of their families and friends who might try to keep them from carrying out their intentions of becoming foreign missionaries. At their meetings they uncovered their deeply stirred emotions on “laboring for God in foreign lands.” When Wade returned” to the campus in 1833 to appeal for men to go to Burma, four members of the Eastern’ Association responded. They were, in addition to Dean and Comstock, Hosea Howard, also Class of 1833, and Samuel S. Day, Class of 1836. After nine months spent studying Burmese and Karen under his and Mrs. Wade’s direction, they sailed with him from Boston for the Far East.

Students who planned to preach in the Mississippi Valley also formed an organization known as the Western Association. Though both the Eastern and Western Associations germinated in the Society

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Missionary Society forms (p. 52)

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out that all of them had returned to orthodoxy to the great rejoicing of the whole community. This episode would seem to indicate skill in stimulating searching examination of theological beliefs.

The rise and development of student societies follow the pattern for such extracurricular activities at other American colleges and seminaries in organization, interests, and program. The first was the Philomathesian, founded in August, 1821, probably with the particular approval of Hascall who had belonged to a group somewhat like this one during his college days at Middlebury. Its interests were literary and theological and its objectives included training in public speaking, maintenance of a library, correspondence with missionaries and with similar organizations on other campuses, and an “inquiry into the most eligible fields of ministerial labor.” Designated members delivered sermons at weekly meetings which the audience and a student critic commented upon. The secretaries conducted an active correspondence with missionaries and the societies at Amherst, Williams, Hamilton, Andover, and other institutions. The library of over fifty volumes consisted chiefly of gifts and included not only religious books and periodicals but also many secular items and newspapers. The secretaries occasionally solicited subscriptions from editors in return for communications. The library served as a useful supplement to the Seminary’s meager collection of books and its remnants, distinguished by the society’s bookplate, may be located today on the University Library’s shelves.

The consecration of Wade and Kincaid, “first fruits of the Institution,” to missionary service in Burma gave a strong impetus to student interest in missions which resulted in the formation of the Missionary Society in 1824. It resembled the Philomathesian Society, which it absorbed seven years later, though its primary concern was missionary work. Besides seeking “the religious improvement of its members” and raising funds for missions it sought “information relative to the climate, productions, civil government, &c of the various nations of the earth “… [and also a] detailed account of their present moral condition and of the obstacles or the successes with which the introduction of the gospel in probability would be met.” In 1832 the organization changed its name to Society for Inquiry though its purpose remained, in general, the same. The members were divided into, nine groups in accordance with the months of the academic year. Each group investigated a

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p. 51 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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ing to leave the institution, offering reasons of ill health which appeared to be fabricated, laying himself under an oath to quit the institution, whether the Com. would consent or not. . . .” This case embarrassed the Executive Committee because he was under the special patronage of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary Board whose financial and moral support they leaned on heavily. Nonetheless, they refused to change their decision or to remove the public censure they had put upon him.

The exploits of the second, who was a “gay young blade” of the Institution in the 1820’s, seem to have leaked through students to the Executive Committee. The Committee’s investigations revealed “that he had paid his addresses to a number of young Ladies and more than one at the same time, had gained the affections of some and excited … and disappointed them, that he had proposed marriage to one and violated his promise and is now negotiating marriage with another.” They dismissed him at the risk of stirring up ill feeling toward the Institution in Vermont, his home state, because the case put in circulation there damaging rumors about the Seminary. From a modern perspective it appears that he was a naive, confused and indiscreet young man, against whom some of his associates vented their spite. After time had erased memories of his youthful improprieties and he had become a successful pastor, his Alma Mater gave him a master of arts degree, and, at the semi-centennial, in 1869, a D.D.

More serious to the Institution’s reputation than rumors of student misbehavior was the pall of Unitarianism which hung over it in 1830 and 1831. Kendrick’s senior class in Divinity, after thorough investigation, came to the conclusion that «the Lord Jesus Christ was not a divine personage, that though evidently superior to man, he was still less than God.” Such a defection from the trinitarian position stunned their fellows and the faculty. Kendrick, Hascall, Whitman, and Sears in a series of lectures vainly sought to dissuade them from such an alarming view, but the only result was to prevent the disease from contaminating the rest of the students. When a neighboring Baptist preacher also failed in his attempt to win the seniors back to “sound” doctrine, Kendrick advised them to cease investigating or discussing the issue for three weeks. Meanwhile, a revival in the Students’ Association fired the campus and spread to the village and nearby towns. When the seniors renewed their study of the question it turned

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p. 50 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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A.M. 5-5:30 chapel
5:30-6 private devotions
6-6:30 reading and studying
6:30-7 breakfast
7-8 exercise by manual labor
8-8:30 private devotions
8:30-12 studies and recitations
12-12:30 dinner

P.M. 12:30-1:30 exercise by manual labor
1:30-5 studies and recitations
5-5:30 chapel
5:30-6 supper
6-6:30 private devotions
6:30-9 meetings, reading, and writing
9-9:30 devotions in room
9:30-4:30 sleep*

Relations between students and faculty were open and cordial. Whenever there was misunderstanding or disagreement among them, Kendrick was always the one to present the faculty viewpoint. Occa­sionally he failed to give the main reason which dictated faculty action, in which case, though the students grumbled, his prestige and moral appeal always disarmed them. The faculty never seems to have acted as policemen and student indiscretions were few. That the Executive Committee could be aware there might be some, appears in their statement in 1823 that “persevering attempts have been made to . . . suppress whatever might appear like youthful imprudences,” though they fail to reveal just what the “attempts” were. They later “Resolved that no Student belonging to the Seminary be permitted to smoke in the Seminary, without special license for that purpose, and that those who chew Tobacco shall furnish themselves with spit boxes in the Chapel and in their study rooms to avoid polluting the house.”

Kendrick and the other officers experienced considerable irritation because of the “youthful imprudences” of a member of the Class of 1826, and of the Class of 1827. They dismissed the first because he had “conducted himself unworthy [sic] of a beneficiary … by neglecting his studies, manifesting a spirit of insubordination, frequently propos-

*F. B. Spear, In Memoriam,  Philetus Bennett Spear, D.D.  (Marquette, 1901), 33-34. Morning Chapel varied from six in winter to five in summer, probably so that students might take advantage of daylight.

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Philoponian society (p. 49)

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The Board, seeing greater opportunities for student labor on a farm, began negotiations which, as has been seen, resulted in the purchase of the Payne property in 1826. Lack .of tools arid planned work led a few students, in August 1827, to form the Philoponian Society: the Greek name meaning “industrious” or “loving labor.” They stated in their constitution that they found by experience “that a suitable portion of exercise, is desperately necessary, to preserve the health of students & render their minds vigorous and active.”*By the end of the year a majority of their colleagues had joined the society.

Members were required to exercise outdoors an hour and a half each day, weather permitting. At the direction of their president, they assembled in the basement of West Hall and, tools in hand, marched to work under the supervision of monitors. In good weather they cultivated the farm or cut timber in the surrounding woods. They also leveled the ground around the new buildings and in other ways improved the campus. In bad weather they practiced gymnastics. At a special meeting in May 1828, when spring fever doubtless was virulent, they “Voted to erect a dam previous to commencement to raise a pond for bathing.”

The profits of the Philoponian Society went into a common fund which was divided each May according to the amount of work each member had done. The officers of the Education Society repeatedly commended the manual labor organization, furnished necessary tools, and required all beneficiaries to become members. One student in 1830 wrote to his brother at school in Peekskill, “labour is valued very high here and enables us to study more than if we laboured not. I advise you by all means to labour an hour or more every day.” By 1832, however, the Board, believing this extracurricular activity took too much time from studies and desiring labor for students which would be more profitable and independent of weather and seasons, established a window-sash factory on the campus. The Trustees planned to use its products in the present East Hall which they then contemplated building. The Philoponian Society reorganized into a “Judiciary Board of the Sash Factory” which lasted until 1833 when the factory seems to have been discontinued.

Wasting time or “loafing and inviting one’s soul” the authorities of the Institution discouraged. The following is the schedule of a student in 1831:

*[Colgate University], Philoponian Society, Record Book, 1827-32, Constitution

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p. 48 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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er, they seem to have been discontented at the white man’s theological school and by 1831 all had left. One became a teacher at the Carey Mission and another, John Tecumseh Jones, became a preacher and was instrumental in the founding of Ottawa University in Kansas.

To earn part of their expenses, students often taught in district schools during the long winter vacation. Some also conducted writing and singing schools and a few assisted with the elementary instruction in the Seminary. Kendrick had student help for much of his secretarial work.

Supplying in churches destitute of pastors was the most common way for students to earn money. The experience gave them valuable training and occasionally the churches liked them well enough to ask them to become their settled pastors. Such contacts also served as effective advertising for the Institution. Students provided the first regular preaching for the First Baptist Church of Syracuse and the congregation furnished a good horse and saddle for their use, Stephen Gano, speaking to students in chapel in 1825, told them they should never be ashamed, for their profession nor worry about preaching “God’s word.” “It is not required of you to explain why God made such a declaration,” he said, “show he has made it.”*

The manual labor experiment which flourished on the campus for a few years represented another attempt to provide financial assistance for students.. This experiment was part of the general manual labor movement, then a fad among educational “institutions all over the country. Since gymnastics and games were frowned upon, or at best seldom encouraged; the movement won approval as a means of promoting physical exercise as well as enabling students to earn money. At Andover they split wood, kept gardens and made coffins and wheelbarrows. In New York State there were five .schools which had extensive manual labor arrangements, the most famous being the Oneida Institute of Industry and Science; which was founded in 1829 at Whitesboro, Oneida County.

Members of the Education Society, aware of the necessity of exercise for their proteges, especially since several were farm boys, recommended to the Executive Committee in 1818 “the propriety of requiring of the students, suitable exercise for the improvement of their health.” When land near the “stone building on the plain” became available, Hascall and Kendrick supervised their work in a garden.

*Daniel Platt, Notebook, I, 91-94

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p. 47 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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Expenses at the Seminary were, of necessity, less than at other comparable institutions. Board, washing and lodging cost only a dollar a week; tuition was $16 a year; and $70 was considered ample for all the needs of the average student. At Andover where no tuition was required, annual expenses varied, in 1825, from $60.00 to $80.00. They ranged from $123.50 to $129 at Brown during the period 1829-33.

A few scholarships, available for the most promising students, yield­ed $70 annually. Jonathan Olmstead established the first in 1822 in accordance with a resolution of the Executive Committee specifying that anyone endowing a $1,000 scholarship “for the support of a Divinity, Charity Scholar, Shall if he Choose have that Scholarship bear up his name forever.” Friends in New York endowed fifteen scholarships worth $70 a year.

The Education Society at first undertook to pay all the expenses of
needy students, or beneficiaries, and often provided them with shoes
and clothing. By 1823 the Executive Committee asked those who had
graduated to refund, if possible, the money spent for them. Later, for a
few years, beneficiaries were required to pay $20 annually toward
their expenses, a policy the Committee considered not only as increas-
ing the means to sustain the school but well calculated to “improve the
young men, in the saving course of prudence and economy, and to
keep up an enterprise to provide in part for themselves, which they
will need through life.” By 1832 they had decided that instead of
gratuitous aid they would grant loans subject to no interest until the
beneficiaries had graduated.

Seven Indian youths who came from the Baptist Carey Mission in
Michigan with the Rev. Isaac McCoy in 1826 constituted a special
class of beneficiaries. The United States Department of War had
agreed to pay part of their expenses, but when a cut in appropriations
held up funds, they had to be supported by the Society and by
independent contributions. They belonged to the Ottawa, Chippewa,
and Potawatomie tribes and rode into the village on Indian ponies to
the astonishment of townspeople and students. One man remembered
as a small boy seeing them throw tomahawks at a mark on a tree about
three rods away and the bystanders’ amazement at their accuracy in
hitting it with the handles up or down as the audience requested. The
Indians were also noted for their fondness for singing hymns. Howev-

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