Category Archives: The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908

p. 262 – The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908

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Dr. Merrill’s recent death. Dean Crawshaw as Acting President took over and was to remain as head until Dr. Bryan’s advent a year later. In December 1907 Dr. Merrill had suffered a stroke, brought on, it would appear, by the burden of his office. He carried out his duties up to February when his condition compelled him to relinquish them but lingered on until June 11th.

Colgate’s loss in Dr. Merrill’s death was indeed great. Under his leadership the University had experienced a steady growth in faculty, students, buildings and grounds and in campus activities. Its atmosphere and tone had acquired a certain new sophistication and its reputation had been enriched and extended. He had given the institution a strong momentum which would carryon well into his successor’s administration.

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p. 261 – The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908

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In the conflict between the claims of the athletic field and the classroom the faculty seems to have stood staunchly by the eligibility rules published in the Catalogue. Team members were generally good students and occasionally included Phi Beta Kappas, Walter Runge and Earl Sweet among them. Though the Athletic Advisory Council, the faculty committee on student organizations, and “Doc” Huntington supervised the sports programs, the President also kept an eye on them. He had serious reservations about football because of the physical danger to the players and certain elements of “unfairness” which he found in the game and in 1903 published his criticisms in the North American Review. Later, however, he was more hopeful. He endorsed the national campaign for cleaning up the game which followed President Roosevelt’s luncheon at the White House in 1905 with coaches and physical education directors. The next year Colgate adopted the new rules to eliminate brutality in the game as announced by the National Intercollegiate Football Rules Committee and joined the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, recently formed to secure fair and reasonable college sport.

Throughout their many vicissitudes James c. Colgate maintained a keen interest in all phases of the athletic program, especially football. He gave considerable material aid but even more valued were “his uncloaked enthusiasm, his personal interest in schedule, coach, team and players and his unequivocal championship of the highest ideals of sportsmanship.

From 1886 to 1900 the teams had been identified by the colors orange and maroon but there had developed a wide latitude of shades for each ranging from yellow and crimson to pink and garnet. In the spring of 1900 the Students’ Association and faculty adopted maroon as the Colgate color and filed in the Library a swatch of silk of the correct shade.

President Merrill sought to give special dignity to commencement and other public academic occasions by the wearing of caps and gowns. In 1899 the faculty and trustees adopted his recommendation that gowns be required of seniors and academic regalia requested of the faculty. Shortly before the 1900 commencement he gave an extended chapel address on academic costume and its significance in anticipation of its first formal use at Colgate.

Over the commencement of 1908 hung a cloud of gloom because of

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Institution of the Block C award by the Athletic Advisory Council (p. 260)

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Sweet, ’01, and the manager was J. Ambler Williams, ’01. The first intercollegiate game was with the University of Vermont at Burlington on January 25th which Colgate lost 6 to 8, and the first home game was with Hamilton College February 2nd which Colgate won by a score of 20 to 19. From 1902 to 1905 Walter Runge matched his football accomplishments with those of equal skill on the basketball court. By 1908 enthusiasm for basketball in the winter and spring seemed to equal that for football in the fall.

The fine cinder track facilities of Whitnall Field aroused a new interest in field sports in which Colgate began to excel. The versatile Frank Castleman was as outstanding a sprinter as a football star and set four Colgate records which stood for at least twenty years. In 1903 the team won the New York State Intercollegiate Track Association pennant for the third straight year and in 1904 Castleman and the captain, C. Roy Nasmith, ’04, earned gold and silver medals at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

Baseball seems to have declined in popularity, though good teams represented Colgate, especially in 1900 and 1901. One observer attributed the lack of interest to the competition of other springtime activities such as track, tennis, and final examinations. To these might be added poor baseball weather and Junior Prom.

To recognize excellence in sports, the Block “C” annual award by the Athletic Advisory Council was instituted in 1900. The first recipients were members of the baseball, track and football teams with the latter being entertained at dinner at the President’s home by Dr. and Mrs. Merrill.

O. & W. Depot, Hamilton, N.Y., c. 1910. Colgate University Postcard Collection.
Hamilton Railroad Station c. 1910

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First basketball team (p. 259)

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and Frank R. Castleman, ’06, “lifted Colgate out of the hick college class” by Runge’s interference coordinated with Castleman’s runs. The Dartmouth game in 1905 was of particular importance in attracting attention to Colgate. Dartmouth which had not lost a game for two years was defeated, 16-10, and the exploits of the winning team, hitherto covered only in the Central New York papers, made headlines on the sports pages of the Eastern press.

Basketball which students of the College, Academy and Seminary were playing as early as 1896 gained steadily in popularity but it was not until 1901 that Colgate had a regular team. Its captain was Earl V.

First Basketball Squad, 1901
Picture of basketball squad

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p. 258 – The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908

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1908. Named for Colgate’s first student, it was an informal organization open to all ministerial students and a few years it was to have its own house in the center of the village.

The rise of modern Colgate athletics may be said to date from the turn of the century. There had been a serious slump at the end of the ’90’s with teams often defeated as their followers “hunched” in their seats to watch the scores mount. The football fortunes were especially low in 1899 when Colgate twice lost to Hamilton College, the big rival. For the second game, however, the students en masse escorted the team to Utica where the game was played, an unprecedented demonstration of support, and at no time did they cease to cheer them on. When the game was over they realized that they had cheered in defeat and had developed a new spirit which was to contribute to various measures for fostering the athletic program such as a new athletic tax, hiring of coaches in all sports, training tables, training rules, organized cheering with cheerleaders, and the granting of bloc “C’s” to players. Additional impetus came from the completion of Whitnall Field with its fine new facilities for football, baseball, and track and the advent of “Doc” Huntington whose guidance and encouragement were vital.

By 1902 an upswing in football was clear and for it particular credit goes to the coach, Frank J. (“Buck”) O’Neill, Williams, ’02, who had been both captain and coach his senior year. His effective instruction, severe discipline, good judgement of potential football prowess among the students, and the courage and assurance he gave the team produced miracles. They won five games, lost three, and tied Hamilton College.

Football relations with Hamilton took a new turn in 1903 when Colgate began a steady winning streak which led to termination of the series in 1907. By this time the growing enrollment in the College had provided sufficient talent and it had been so well developed that the teams of the two institutions were no longer on a par. Meanwhile the rivalry with Syracuse, which had been resumed in 1902 through O’Neill’s intervention, supplanted that with the college in Clinton in intensity and interest.

O’Neill, who had been recalled to Williams in 1903 to rescue his Alma Mater from misfortune on the gridiron, returned for the 1904 and 1905 seasons. It was in the former that his players, Walter Runge,’06,

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p. 257 – The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908

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Academy student, demonstrated his ability at illustration and caricature which were later to win him wide acclaim.

Colgate achieved notice and commendation as a “singing college” in the 1900’s. Among a freshman’s first obligations was to learn the growing number of Colgate songs. Village merchants, the Madisonensis, and the student bookstore distributed song sheets, especially during the football season when classrooms often rang with singing before the business of the day started. Several students tried their hand at producing new songs. None was as successful as Lindol E. French, ’02, who had in mind the music of the popular ballad “Juanita” as he wrote the words “When through thy valley…” in 1904. He knew nothing of their enthusiastic acceptance until he discovered at a football game some time later the students were singing them as the “Alma Mater”and as such they have remained.Conversation, Lindol E. French, ’04, and H.D.W., June 12, 1937.

The YMCA program attracted considerable support. It included: publishing the Student’s Handbook, i.e. Frosh Bible; the annual reception for freshmen in September; prayer meetings; and Bible study classes. Attendance at chapel was required but Sunday church services in the village had long since become voluntary. In the spring of 1908 student religious interest was quickened by a series of meetings held in the Baptist Church by a traveling evangelist.

Public speaking contests inspired a great deal of enthusiasm. Inter-class debates were encouraged, particularly as training grounds for intercollegiate rivalry. The first intercollegiate debate seems to have been with Cornell in 1904. Colgate, represented by members of its first debating club, won the decision. The Lewis, Rowland and Grout oratorical prizes were eagerly sought after. The chief public speaking contests received as detailed and enthusiastic reporting in the Madisonensis as the major games on the gridiron, diamond, or court.

For about a decade after the middle 90’s student efforts at play production seem to have been nonexistent. Whether their interests were diverted in other directions or whether James B. Colgate’s hostility to the stage thwarted them is not known. In 1905, about a year after his death, they produced a comedy and a few months later organized a dramatic club which gave new life to this activity.

Several of the theologues organized the Jonathan Wade Union about

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p. 256 – The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908

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amused themselves clothing it with undergarments or painting it various bright colors. Once it turned up on the Hamilton Female Seminary lawn with its outstretched hand pointing to the window of the most popular girl there. It appeared again in 1884 at the Class of 1887’s “Burning of Livy” after which it passed into Professor Taylor’s custody only to be rediscovered in the fall of 1899 by Harry Emerson Fosdick, ’00, and Herbert W. Marean, ’01. Familiar with the Amherst Sabrina tradition, they decided to institute a similar custom at Colgate to foster college spirit. After they had buried their find in a “secret” place on Bonney Hill they drew up rules for the passing of “the bird” from class to class and turned him over to the juniors. Thereafter, until 1919 when the faculty abolished the tradition, a series of wild escapades ensued as rival classes battled with each other over possession of the statue and putting it on display at their banquets and at public occasions. Some of the choicest memories of alumni of these years center around this custom. Dr. Fosdick, writing in the Alumni News, confessed in retrospect twenty years later “I am inclined to think that I did no great service for my Alma Mater by starting all the rumpus that followed. It was a college man’s lark and Marean and I enjoyed getting the thing under way. We had no prevision, however, of the developments that were to follow.”

Student publications improved notably at the turn of the century, especially in design and art work. From 1902 to 1904 the Madisonensis covers featured considerable art nouveau. The Salmagundi after 1905 was notable for drawings by Ernest Hamlin Baker, ’12, who, even as an

Party decorations, Old Gymnasium, c. 1905
Picture of Old Gymnasium

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p. 255 – The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908

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life such as academic honors or the college and the professions. He and the faculty sought not only to encourage scholarly effort but to stem the mounting emphasis on extracurricular activities and their financial cost which many students could ill afford. The age-old struggle between the teacher and the taught had intensified at most American colleges and Colgate was no exception. More important for many students than the curriculum was “college life,” made up of fraternities, athletics, public speaking contests and YMCA programs, publications, and musical organizations. As Henry Seidel Canby in his Alma Mater noted of Yale at the turn of the century, behind these activities was “college spirit-naive intellectually but emotionally vigorous, the still youthful soul of the last great age of American individualism.” His observation holds for Colgate as well.

A revival of interest in the honor system, which had been in existence a decade before, stimulated in part by the examples of Princeton and other colleges, led to its re-adoption at Colgate in 1906. Despite serious reservations that fraternity men would not report on their brothers who were caught cribbing, the general opinion seemed to be that it operated successfully.

Interclass rivalry in the College, especially between the freshmen and sophomores, was still one of the most cherished college customs. It manifested itself particularly in the autumn in the rushes over “salting” the freshmen, the right to carry canes, and the posting of “proclamations” on the campus and in the village, in which each class made scurrilous remarks about the other. The spring prank of “ringing the rust” was retained as late as 1907 and “burning the algebras” by the freshmen on completing a mathematics course seems to have superseded the earlier “Cremation of Livy.” Recognition of promotion, or hoped-for promotion, came at the Moving-Up Day chapel service in the spring in which each class marched to the seats of the preceding class, with the seniors occupying those vacated by the freshmen, while singing “Where, oh where, are the pea-green freshmen….” This custom started around 1900, as Professor Aude remembered it.

No tradition caused more excitement than the rivalry between the freshmen and sophomores over the possession of Mercury, the battered remains of a statue of the god which the Class of 1879 had presented as a class gift. Originally placed on a pedestal in front of Alumni Hall, its “bronze” surface began to peel after a few years and students then

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Off-campus study group begins (p.254)

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Two innovations appeared in the Seminary’s program: an off campus study group and an Italian Department. The first, begun in 1905, permitted advanced students to spend a term in New York City under the instruction of Edward Judson, minister of the Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Washington Square, who had taught Pastoral Theology on a part-time basis, 1897-1900. They were thus enabled to gain first-hand experience with urban problems, city missions, charity organizations and settlement work. The second, the Italian Department, established in 1906, for training Italian young men to become ministers of Baptist churches of their countrymen in the United States, was similar to those for Germans at Rochester and Scandinavians at the Chicago Theological Seminaries. Antonio Mangano, a former student at Colgate and a graduate of Brown and Union Theological Seminary, became the professor in charge. With the assistance of three special faculty members, he formally opened the department in 1907 in Brooklyn where it was to continue for twenty years.

Colgate Academy under Principal Frank L. Shepardson held to its philosophy of developing Christian character and high scholarship as essential qualities for useful citizens. Enrollment ranged from a low of 131 in 1906 to a high of 153 in 1905. To improve standards a “pre-academic” course was added to the regular four-year course in 1905 to accommodate the young men who had’ not completed all necessary preliminary subjects on entering, a change bringing to the Academy full accreditation of) the New York State Board of Regents. The extra year also made possible additional offerings in the Scientific Course.

The marked decline in the number of students who planned to enter the ministry which had appeared in the College in the 1890’s was more pronounced in the early 1900’s. A trend, begun in 1897, when the proportion of the graduating class going into teaching exceeded those for the ministry, was maintained without interruption. In the Class of 1908, six were headed toward the pulpit and 13 toward the classroom. Business was generally the second choice but the popularity of this vocation was not to become dominant until a later period. The campus was assuming a distinctly secular coloration.

To give fitting recognition to the opening of the academic year, President Merrill instituted a formal convocation in September 1901, a custom which each of his successors observed in due course. He made it an opportunity for delivering a homily on some aspect of university

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p. 253 – The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908

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tion of his associates and the students. An alumnus of Amherst where he was a pupil of the great pioneer in physical education, Dr. Edward Hitchcock, he had studied medicine and physical education at the University of Virginia and had taught physical education and Greek at the University of Nashville. He introduced the novel idea that muscle-building should give way to body-building and that the often dreary and dreaded required “gym-hour” should become a “play-hour” with a purpose. His courses in hygiene related physical well-being to mental and spiritual health. Assuming general supervision of intercollegiate athletics in addition to his other duties, he made out schedules, planned finances, and accompanied teams on trips. His wisdom and leadership were crucial as Colgate athletics burgeoned in the first quarter of the 20th century.

From 1899 to 1908 enrollment in the College rose from 151 to 278, an increase the President worked strenuously to bring about through advertising, the travels of the Field Secretary, Vincent B. Fisk, and the usual contacts through speeches and correspondence available to him and the faculty. Dean Crawshaw represented Colgate in devising theuniform college entrance examinations of the Association of the Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle Atlantic States and the faculty accepted them in 1902. The largest spurt in enrollment, from 178 in 1903 to 228 in 1903 served to underline the growing need for more faculty and facilities.

In contrast to the College, the Seminary had difficulty in maintaining its enrollment which dropped from 46 in 1899 to 37 for the next three years and then gradually pushed up to 53 in 1907 and receded to 50 in 1908. Hence, there was no strong pressure for increasing its faculty. One, however, was added in 1900: John B. Anderson, a graduate of the College in 1896 and of the Seminary in 1898, who came from a pastorate at Camillus to teach ecclesiology and English Bible. Each year a number of experts, many of them widely known, gave lectures in a variety of fields to supplement the regular courses. Though the theological views of the faculty were quite diverse, freedom of discussion prevailed without the conflict which the Schmidt case generated in the 1890’s. President Merrill believed that the graduates of the Seminary should be thoroughly equipped to deal with the current theological questions and controversies as well as for carrying out pastoral duties.

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