Fairfield, New York, gave his course of lectures in chemistry, both on the Hill and at the Hamilton Academy. Professor Taylor took over chemistry instruction in 1843. Astronomy always had a place in the curriculum throughout this period, but geology and mineralogy seem to have been offered only in 1836. A course in biology based on William Smellie’s Philosophy of Natural History was given from 1833 to 1835.
Unfortunately, when Professor Taylor had gotten the work in science nicely developed he resigned and recent graduates added to the faculty as tutors attempted to carry on in his place. The students resented this makeshift arrangement which was to last until the 1850’s.
The quality of instruction in the Institution’s two-year preparatory course proved to be so good in the mid-’40’s that the Hamilton Academy, which a decade before had been rated second in the state by the Board of Regents, suffered severely from the competition. The office of principal was abolished in 1838 and the regular faculty assumed responsibility for the elementary work in their respective fields and either conducted classes themselves or directed advanced students who served as assistants.
The eight-year course embracing the three departments of the Institution had no counterpart. Professor Raymond wrote of it in the Society’s Annual Report in 1842:
The organization is certainly unique-strikingly so. Its precise model is not to be found, we believe, in any other school, secular or religious, at home or abroad. But the Board…did not feel bound by existing models. Their eye was fixed on the specific wants of our own zion; and, while they were not negligent of, the lights of experience or unsolicitous to secure the counsels of the wise, their measures were all finally adopted with exclusive reference to those wants. The result of many years anxious and prayerful deliberation, of very many distinct and cautious and (almost invariably). unanimous decisions, is before us in the plan of the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution- a place so manifestly the work of Divine Providence and so susceptible of justification in all its essential features, that we think none but the most ureflecting could condemn it on the irrelevant, ground of non-conformity to institutions formed under different circumstances for different ends.
The efforts of the faculty and trustees to build up the library failed to advance with the development and improvement of the curriculum. At the Education Society’s annual meeting in 1833 William Colgate
