Category Archives: Chapter 9

p. 200 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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reigned on the campus and in the village. Students and citizens, abetted by a brass band and by all kinds of “noisemakers,” such as horns and tin pans, paraded up and down the streets all evening holding rallies and serenading all who had been active in the cause. The first “Colgate” yell, composed in anticipation of the occasion, rang in the air-

 

“Yell high, Yell great Rah, rah, Colgate!”

 

 

The next evening the students marched in triumph to the railroad depot to meet Joseph Mason, the local attorney who had represented the University before the Regents, and Professor Maynard who had accompanied him, and rejoicing alumni. Once again there was a town and gown parade lasting from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Then came a banquet attended by about 400 townspeople, faculty, students, and alumni in Tripp’s Opera House which lasted well into the next morning. A band, an orchestra, and the college Glee Club provided music, a Utica caterer the food, and 14 speakers enthusiastically hailed the “open door for untold progress” and pledged loyalty to Colgate University.

As the Dodge period closed, the friends of Colgate University could congratulate themselves on what had been achieved. The endowment had more than tripled; campus landscaping had begun; four new buildings had been erected and each of the three divisions of the University was housed separately; the faculty had nearly doubled and several exceptionally fine teachers had served or were serving on it; and the curriculum had undergone various changes with the introduction of new courses and electives which brought the University in line with current advances in American higher education.

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Madison University name changed to Colgate (p. 199)

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largely on the many associations which had been attached to the old name since 1846. It was also suggested that potential donors would be less likely to contribute if the institution bore the Colgate name, believing that the family should assume its chief support. The Colgates, in fact, had not been consulted, nor did they favor the change but once the strength of opinion for it became clear they assented rather than embarrass its advocates.

The University and Education Society Trustees at their meetings in June, 1889, at which neither James B. Colgate nor his brother, Samuel, were present, adopted, without opposition, the motion to petition the State Supreme Court for the change. Dr. Dodge was foremost in urging this step. His leading opponent was Dr. Spear, the recently retired Treasurer, who seems to have been convinced he was called upon to defend the University, whatever the cost, as he had done so effectively in the Removal Controversy of 1847-50. He proceeded to obtain counsel, send communications to the press, circularize alumni, and collect the affidavits of those who agreed with him. To meet his tactics, Dr. Dodge, the faculty, and representative trustees also put their views before the public and the alumni and solicited affidavits. Rather than take immediate action on the petition the court appointed a referee to gather evidence and make a report. Meanwhile, Dr. Dodge died January 5th, 1890; Dr. Spear, who was, he thought, fatally ill, withdrew his opposition at the strong behest of Samuel Colgate who assured him that James B. Colgate would continue to support the University but only if the objectors were to lose their case. The referee preceeded with the hearings and in due time made his report recommending that the petition be granted. The court accepted the recommendation and, on April 21, 1890, authorized the change of name, effective May 26th.

Of the approximately 650 alumni over 400 had signed the affidavits for change while of the 75 who objected, all but 13 withdrew their opposition before the court acted. The undergraduates, who at first disapproved of the new name, by February, 1890, unanimously endorsed it, many of them out of respect to the late Dr. Dodge’s wishes.

Public celebration of the name change was set off by the news on March 14th, 1890, that the Regents of the University of the State of New York had approved it unanimously the day before. The momentous telegram reached Hamilton about noon and soon pandemonium

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p. 198 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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Prof. Eugene P. Sisson, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p198Prof. Hezekiah Harvey, '45, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p198Dean Sylvester Burnham, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p198

 

 

In the early 1880’s Professor Lewis and others had suggested changing the name of the University from Madison to Colgate. It was not until the close of the decade, however, that sufficient sentiment had generated among alumni and friends to make such a move possible. The arguments for it were clear. The Colgate family had been intimately and devotedly associated with the institution since 1823 as trustees and benefactors and their wise counsel and financial assistance had been of great importance for nearly seventy years. Of the estimated $850,000 of capital assets of the University in 1889, $605,000 represented their gifts. In addition, they had been generous contributors for current expenses. Those who wanted the change could cite many precedents for expressing gratitude to benefactors by attaching their names to colleges, as for example, Colby, Bucknell, and Brown, as well as Harvard and Yale. Then, too, they pointed to the confusion of Madison University with the University of Wisconsin at Madison which annoyed alumni in the West. In the East there was a Methodist theological seminary at Madison, New Jersey, which could mislead the unknowing, and also neighboring Hamilton College at Clinton which was frequently mistaken for Madison University since Madison University was often loosely identified as “Hamilton” from its location in the village of that name. The arguments against the change rested

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p. 197 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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Prof. Alexander M. Beebee Jr., '47, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p197Prof. William H. Maynard, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p197

 

 

Interest in the University Library developed slowly in the Dodge period. In addition to teaching and being Dean, Professor Andrews served as Librarian from 1868 to 1880 and Professor Burnham from 1880 to 1892. The book collection was kept in a single room on the second floor of Alumni Hall. It numbered about 7,500 volumes in 1869, and 18,500 twenty years later. The establishment in the 1870’s of an endowment fund of $25,000, the income of which was for book purchases, brought about a steady increase on the shelves. James B. Colgate occasionally made gifts of luxurious art books and special sets. Dr. Dodge, who was something of a bibliophile, presented his library of some 3,500 volumes which was especially rich in art and theology. He had never spared expense in acquiring his treasures, many of which he valued for their fine colorful bindings as well as their contents. Despite his counsel to students to read the best English novels, the Library was seriously deficient in English and American literature. Few students, however, seem to have had a taste for leisure-time reading, nor did the fact that the Library was open only three hours a day and lacked an adequate catalog encourage them to acquire one. The opening of the James B. Colgate Library in 1891 was to create new opportunities for reading and study.

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p. 196 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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Society, apparently anticipating possible criticism, appointed a standing committee in 1888 to examine classes and departments and to report to the Board.

Dr. Dodge’s liberality as Professor of Christian Theology undoubtedly encouraged his Seminary faculty colleagues to venture in new directions. His theology was always open to revision, Dr. Maynard recalled..Yet, he had a strong conservative strain and was no iconoclast. Dr. William Newton Clarke, his friend and successor, saw him as “swift in spirit, and cautious in step.” He permitted wide freedom in class discussion and had consideration and patience for students, no matter how extreme their views.

Professor Hezekiah Harvey, who had resigned from the faculty in 1864 returned in 1869 as Professor of New Testament Interpretation and Pastoral Theology. A saintly man who suffered from chronic ill health, he held a moderate position, emphasizing an evangelical creed. He had no quarrel with Biblical scholarship as such but rejected radical interpretations; his real concern was to teach in terms of the “practical necessities of the pastorate.”

The third division of the University, the Grammar School, or Colgate Academy, developed its own organization and policies independently of the College and Seminary with the completion of its building in 1874. The University Trustees, of course, maintained a general oversight. Mr. James B. Colgate was especially interested in its fortunes and liked to visit the school and address the students. He felt that the faculty should stress instruction in morals and stated “If any teacher dare to teach . . . sentiments subversive to the teachings of God’s word, let him be dismissed.” The school’s major purpose continued to be preparation for college but it did offer an “English and Scientific Course” for those not planning to go on. A large percentage of the graduates entered the College. Francis W. Towle, ’62, was principal 1873-82, and James W. Ford, ’73, followed him from 1883 to 1888. Outstanding among the faculty was Eugene P. Sisson, a graduate of Oswego Normal School, who joined the staff in 1873 after five years as principal of the Hamilton High School. He was sometimes acting principal and taught in the Academy until its closing in 1912 when he became Assistant Professor of Mathematics in the College. A natural teacher, “Daddy” Sisson won and held the affection of his students who prized his fatherly oversight and timely encouragement.

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p. 195 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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theology, pastoral theology and homiletics. During the 1880’s, innovations began to reflect the new Biblical criticism and the interpretations of leading scholars both within and outside the Baptist denomination. There was renewed stress on the languages of the Bible by Professor Burnham, a specialist in Old Testament Hebrew, and by Professor Nathaniel Schmidt, also an expert in Biblical Greek and the Semitic languages, who joined the faculty in 1888. A native-born Swede, he had attended Stockholm University and in 1884-87 he studied at the Seminary where Dr. Dodge’s liberal attitudes had profoundly shaped his own views.

Professor Burnham, a Bowdoin graduate in 1862, had studied at Heidelberg, Gottingen, and Leipzig. He had also been a pastor and was closely associated with William Rainey Harper in the field of Old Testament scholarship. One student remembered that “His raven locks and beard, his large features, his vigor of body, mind and spirit, made him a veritable Elijah as he stood before his classes.” By the middle ’80’s he seems to have arrived at the position of constructive criticism of the orthodox view. In less than a decade, however, he was to take the role of the conservative in a bitter dispute with his younger associate, Professor Schmidt.

The advances of science were not overlooked in the Seminary. In 1887-88 Dr. Brooks gave a series of lectures on the relations of science and religion and after his death, his widow maintained the series in his memory until 1900. Dr. Alexander Winchell, eminent geologist of the University of Michigan who had been expelled from Vanderbilt University some years previously for his liberal views, lectured in 1889 and in 1890; his topics included: “The Place of Man in Creation” and “The Theistic Interpretation of Evolution.” So great an impression did he make that the Seminary faculty in 1891, on learning of his death, extended condolences to the President of the University of Michigan and noted his passing as “a most serious loss to the cause of religion & science.”

A sign in the direction of liberalization is to be found in a statement which first appeared in 1885 in a Seminary Catalogue that the object of instruction “has been, not to impress a common stamp upon the minds of its students, but to secure the best development of individual power consecrated to Christ.” The Trustees of the Baptist Education

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Phi Beta Kappa (p. 194)

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four years in college and were designed to provide them a set of standards for meeting problems of religion and of public and private morality. His role as teacher, he filled as effectively as that of president. He encouraged students to examine all kinds of ideas without restraint. One observer and friend stated, “Most fervently did he believe in free thought. He held it to be an indispensable requisite to large discovery of truth. Fetters on the mind he utterly abhorred, and he would have cut off his own right hand before he would have helped to bind them upon any human being.”

Professor Beebee gave most of his attention to his courses in homiletics in the Seminary but he did teach logic to college juniors. Professor Sylvester Burnham, appointed to the Seminary faculty in 1875, by student request, first offered an elective course in Biblical Literature for college seniors in 1887. His approach was an analysis of the Bible as national literature in comparison with other ancient literatures. The course won acceptance and was adopted by other colleges.

Academic incentives in the form of prize competitions numbered three in 1869 and twelve in 1890, and at the latter date rewarded distinguished achievement in the classics, chemistry, history, mathematics, English composition, public speaking, and debate. Professor Lewis had been active in instigating and promoting those in the last three areas. He also encouraged the University to join the Intercollegiate Literary Association in 1876. This organization staged an annual contest among the colleges for the best essays, orations, and examinations in literature which to some extent rivaled in interest the intercollegiate athletic contests of the time. Madison entrants were among the winners in 1878, 1879, and 1880.

The University’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Eta of New York, owes its existence primarily to Professor Lewis. He forwarded an application for a charter to the Union College chapter, Alpha of New York, in 1873 but, apparently through inadvertance, favorable action was delayed until 1878 when Alpha complied. Associated with him as founding members were President Dodge and Professors Maynard, Burnham and Judson and they in turn elected to membership six seniors, the seven remaining faculty members, and 21 alumni.

Throughout the Dodge period the Seminary curriculum retained its major divisions of Old and New Testament, ecclesiastical history,

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p. 193 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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class in French his senior year. This appointment marks the start of a lifetime of outstanding service to Colgate in teaching and administration which ended with his retirement 43 years later.

Belonging to the “old school,” by reason of age if not necessarily temperament, was Terry’s old teacher, William H. Maynard, Hamilton College A.B., 1854, who came from the pastorate to Madison in 1875 as Bleecker Professor of Moral Philosophy and as Professor of Ecclesiastical History. He seems to have had a roving assignment teaching variously church history, ethics, “Social Science”-not defined-and political economy. In 1886 he introduced a course in “Contemporary Socialism” in which he discussed “the views of the most prominent living socialists.” He stressed the “right of private judgment” and, to the distress of some, was a staunch free-trader and Democrat. In later years Professor Terry remembered how, as a student, he had been impressed with the atmosphere of Maynard’s classroom, “its fairness, its justice, its patient charity for the foibles of the past, its belief in humanity, its confidence in the future” which Terry sought to realize in his own teaching.

Professor Edward Judson, who had joined the faculty in 1867, to teach Latin and modern languages, resigned in 1874 to go into the pastorate. Most notable of the four men who followed him was Albert G. Harkness, 1883-89, who subsequently became an eminent Latin scholar at Brown University. Under his direction the number of courses in French and German had expanded by 1886.

Dean Andrews, “Kai Gar” as he was affectionately known to his students, continued in the chair of “Greek language and literature” until his death in 1918. In 1879-80 he spent the year abroad studying philology and classical archaeology. This was to be the first of four trips to Europe and Asia to enrich his teaching. He viewed the instruction of his department as providing intellectual discipline and literary culture. As his Greek courses began to’ recede in importance with the curriculum revision of the ’80’s he offered a course in art in 1880 which extended the work Professor Lewis had done in that field and which won enthusiastic student acceptance. Professor Andrews also introduced instruction in psychology which was a outgrowth of Dr. Dodge’s course in metaphysics and it, too, was highly regarded.

Dr. Dodge continued to give the presidential courses for seniors in Evidences of Christianity and Christian Ethics which culminated their

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p. 192 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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creative of them and had a wide adoption. His second was College Algebra, 1889; five more were published in the next two decades.

From 1888 to 1891 the curriculum included engineering, taught by William C. Eaton, ’69, son of President George W. Eaton. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a member of the Navy’s engineering corps, he had been detailed for this assignment. Apparently for lack of interest, engineering was dropped after his departure.

Perhaps the most cultivated faculty member was the Professor of Civil History, English Literature, and Oratory, John James Lewis, whom colleagues and students alike loved and admired. An intense and zealous Welshman, he won the reputation of being, in the words of the faculty’s resolution passed at his death in 1884, “a competent and rare instructor.” In addition to his skill, industry and patience in teaching public speaking and composition, he grounded his students in literature and gave lectures on architecture, sculpture, and painting, which he supplemented at least once by a field trip to an “Art Gallery” in Utica in 1878. His courses in English, European, and American History, the first of their kind at Madison, had a good student response, particularly those in American history which were introduced in 1880-81. This year also saw the appearance of his course in international law.

Professor Lewis’s successor was Benjamin S. Terry, ’78. The youngest member of the faculty in 1885, genial, witty, scholarly and progressive, he with Professor McGregory and a few others took the lead in modernizing the curriculum. After his first year he divested himself of responsibility for rhetoric and elocution to concentrate on his real interest, history. Lectures and readings, often in reprints of original sources, took the place of recitations and he instituted seminars for advanced students which called for investigation, essays, and critical discussion. At his instigation the Bushnell Prizes were established for the best senior essays which were later published and distributed. He represented advanced approaches to instruction. To many of his faculty colleagues it must have been no great surprise that he resigned in 1892 after a year in Germany where he had earned a Ph.D. at Freiburg to go to rapidly expanding University of Chicago.

To relieve Professor Terry of his work in rhetoric and elocution, William H. Crawshaw, Class of 1887, was made an instructor in those subjects almost immediately on graduating; he had already taught a

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p. 191 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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and Lecturer in Natural History, 1874-88, the Darwinian theory presented no problems. One former student remembered: “His belief in Evolution as the method of God not only did not interfere with his Christian faith, but confirmed it, and seemed a part of it. To him as scientist, God was in all things; to him as Christian, all things were in God.” He seems to have been a Baptist version of St. Francis of Assisi in his “warm brotherly feeling for even the humblest of living things” and in speaking always of plants as if they were fellow creatures. He was the old-fashioned preacher-scientist without formal training, or pretensions to having it, who “reached his conclusions by insight” which others arrived at “only after long and painful toil.” It was not the laboratory but the out-of-doors which aroused his enthusiasm. Here he introduced his students to the secrets of the rocks and of plant and animal life. Perhaps their most treasured experiences were his field trips, especially those to Trenton Falls, north of Utica, which lasted three or four days. His classrooms in West Hall attracted attention for his unusually artistic and clear blackboard drawings and the display of specimens and equipment, much of which he bought out of his own funds. He taught his classes by lectures which were sometimes illustrated by lantern slides and published notes in zoology and geology printed by the local press. For the more advanced students there were delightful evenings at his home for the reading and discussion of papers. Guests were often present and at the end of the evening Mrs. Brooks provided bountiful refreshments. As one alumnus recalled: “The man himself was an inspiration to a better life. Students who came into contact with him didn’t learn very much about formal science but they did get new conception of the Glory of God.”

Aaron H. Cole, ’84, who took over Dr. Brooks’ work after his death, regarded laboratory work as an absolute necessity for biological and geological study. He fitted up a room in West Hall for this purpose and at his suggestion the Class of 1889 raised $500 as a class memorial for the purchase of microscopes and other apparatus.

During the Dodge period Professor Taylor established himself as an outstanding teacher of mathematics. Vigorous and exacting, he nonetheless won the affection of his students to whom he was “Prof Jim.” Despite his extensive labors as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds he found time to make important contributions in the field of mathematics textbooks. His first, Calculus, 1884, was rated the most

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