Category Archives: Administrative Problems and Incorporation, 1833-1846

p. 105 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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The new Board of the University and the Trustees of the Education Society met jointly for the first time in June, 1846. In discussing their relationship both groups felt a common interest in safeguarding ministerial education. In order to afford ample opportunity for members to examine all details of possible arrangements the Boards might make between themselves, it was decided to defer final action for a year. Until that time the Education Society Trustees were to continue their supervision of the Institution as in the past. After the reading of the Board’s report, Ira Harris introduced a resolution approving the charter, which the members of the Society unanimously passed.

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p. 104 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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circles who became one of the first trustees of Madison University, used his influence to get favorable action.

The objection raised in 1845 that there was no proper agent to receive the charter had been met by setting up an independent corporation, Madison University, which had the power to provide for its own succession. Of the twenty-seven men composing the first Board of Trustees, seventeen were at the same time trustees of the Baptist Education Society, thus making an interlocking directorate. All of them were Baptists and New York residents; six came from Albany, six from Hamilton, seven from New York City and Brooklyn, three from Utica, and one each from Rochester, Homer, Elbridge, Fayetteville, and Waterville. Twenty were laymen; among them, in addition to Ira Harris were William Colgate, Seneca B. Burchard, Friend Humphrey, Alvah Pierce, Henry Tower, John N. Wilder, and ex-governor William L. Marcy. The clergymen included Nathaniel Kendrick; Bartholomew T. Welch, well-known Albany pastor; Edward Bright, Jr., preacher and editor; William R. Williams, outstanding New York City minister, and Pharcellus Church, a member of the Class of 1824 and pastor of the First Baptist Church of Rochester.

The charter defined the purpose of Madison University as “promoting literature and science” but made no mention of training ministers. The character of the new Trustees was no doubt sufficient guarantee that this new function would not be neglected. Perhaps the omission of this point was used as a means of facilitating the passage of the act of incorporation. The charter authorized the Education Society to make whatever arrangements seemed proper for the transfer of all or part of its property to the University whose location was fixed at Hamilton. The right to grant degrees was stipulated, and the Trustees were empowered to appoint the faculty subject to removal by a majority vote of the total membership of the Board.

The Education Society Trustees believed incorporation would benefit the Institution in many ways without detracting from its efficiency as an agency for ministerial education. They saw the charter as a means of advancing its reputation, enlisting state aid, and increasing the number of tuition-paying students in the collegiate department. They rejoiced also that there now existed in the State a Baptist university which would provide “the education of our sons at college by teachers who hold the truth as we hold it.”

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p. 103 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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the Removal Controversy of 1847-50. The Board, however, maintained that the advantages of a charter would accrue to ministerial as well as general education. Once the issue had been decided, Dr. Kendrick in his usual fashion gracefully accepted their judgment as final and continued to cooperate in the common enterprise.

In 1843, when a second attempt was made to get a charter, Dr. Kendrick visited Albany to lobby for the project. The petition, this time for Madison College, was introduced in the Assembly in January. By April the bill for incorporation, when it had advanced to a third reading, was again rejected. The objection now raised was the alleged lack of a proper body of trustees. Neither The Education Society, an organization open to anyone who paid the $1.00 annual membership fee, nor its Board, which was elected on a yearly basis, was considered a satisfactory agent to hold a charter.

The students, eager to get degrees on finishing their college work, had watched the progress of events in Albany with no little interest. Since no charter seemed to be forthcoming, the faculty endeavored in 1843 to make arrangements with Brown University to grant degrees to collegiate-department graduates. Though President Wayland favored the proposition, the negotiations failed, and the faculty applied to Columbian College (George Washington University) in Washington, D.C. Columbian’s new president, Joel S. Bacon, who had been their colleague from 1833 to 1837, was able to induce his trustees in 1844 to accede to the request. The arrangement provided that Columbian would confer degrees on collegiate-department graduates whom the Institution’s faculty certified. Members of the classes of 1844 and 1845 and several men who had graduated earlier received Columbian diplomas.

Despite the legislative rebuffs of 1840 and 1843 the faculty did not abandon hope of a charter. In 1845 they recommended that the Board seek incorporation as Chenango College. Their recommendation was carried out the next January, and on March 17 the Assembly passed a bill by a vote of 89 to 13 to establish Madison University, named for the county in which it was situated. Eight days later the Senate accepted it unanimously, and on March 26, 1846, Governor Silas Wright affixed his signature. No reference to any legislative debates on the bill has been found. It may be assumed, however, that Assembly­man Ira Harris, prominent Albany political leader active in Baptist

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p. 102 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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achieved a fair degree of maturity, a status which must have cheered
the Trustees while at the same time it presented new problems. The Board hoped for State aid since the opening of the collegiate depart­ment to non-ministerial students in 1839 made that division the equivalent of a regular college. Students who entered the collegiate course, meanwhile, began to ask for baccalaureate degrees. Efforts to get State patronage and permission to grant degrees were the back- ground of the movement for incorporation which eventually attained success with the granting of the Madison University Charter in 1846.

The first suggestion that State money might be available came in 1839 from Charles Walker of Utica, a trustee and a member of the State Assembly. He and Friend Humphrey of Albany, likewise a trustee and a member of the Senate, were authorized to petition the legislature in January, 1840, for an annual appropriation of $5,000. Their exertions were unavailing, however, since the legislature refused to grant funds to an unincorporated institution.

To obviate this objection, the Executive Committee, faculty, several Board members, and citizens of Hamilton and vicinity immediately took steps to get the collegiate department incorporated as Hamilton University. The Assembly unanimously approved their petition in April, 1840, but the next month it was rejected by a 16 to 9 vote in the Senate. The reason was that the proposed university did not meet conditions which the Regents of the University of the State of New York imposed on all institutions asking for charters, namely, that they possess specified assets of not less than $70,000. Though the resources of the Institution were estimated at more than this sum, they were not invested and secured as the Regents required.

Dr. Kendrick, who was much more interested in training Baptist ministers than in seeing the collegiate department expand, opposed the charter movement as strongly as he had the admission of non-ministerial students. He was apprehensive lest the collegiate department become independent of the other divisions with the result that the local advantages for theological education might be impaired. He also feared that incorporation would make the Institution less dependent on the churches, whose agent it had always been, and, consequently, less responsive to their needs. Furthermore, he questioned whether, if a charter were obtained, Hamilton would be the best location for the collegiate department, thus anticipating one of the important issues of

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p. 101 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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To supplant the Cottage Edifice, which the increased enrollment made too small for dining purposes, a new Boarding Hall was built in 1838 under the supervision of Steward Edmunds. It was 95 feet long, 42 feet wide, and two stories high. Its site “on the plain” where the present Huntington Gymnasium now is, was considered to have several advantages: students would get exercise by walking down the Hill for their meals; produce could be brought in easily from the Society’s farm; and access to the village for business purposes would be convenient. The Cottage Edifice was fitted up for classrooms.

Students themselves provided what today would be called janitor service. They not only kept their own rooms in order but also rang the bell for classes and services, swept and lighted the classrooms, and heated them with wood which they themselves sawed and chopped. A sense of cleanliness and neatness does not seem to have restrained some from throwing various objects out of dormitory windows. The faculty and Students Association found it necessary to make regulations prohibiting the practice, the Association even voting a fine of one shilling for throwing out water, especially mop water.

The Board and students took measures for fire protection, but no significant conflagrations occurred. In 1837 the Trustees directed the steward to take out a $10,000 fire insurance policy. Occupants of dormitories were required to furnish themselves with sheet-iron covered pans for carrying live coals to their stoves and were directed not to steal embers from classrooms. Each was supposed to have a pail full of water in his room in the evening before retiring for use in case of emergencies. One December Sunday in 1837 there were two small fires in West Hall. The first started in a chimney during the night, and burned into the ceiling by morning when it was put out. The second happened in the afternoon when most of the students were attending services in the village. When the alarm was given, the congregations in the Baptist,· Congregational, and Episcopal churches immediately broke up and raced for the Hill in sleighs, on horseback and on foot. Before many arrived the blaze, again in a chimney, had been extin­guished. Within a few days the Board asked that two bucket brigades and a property-recovering company be formed, but apparently these organizations were short-lived because within a few years new ones were established.

By 1840 the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution had

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East Hall built (p. 100)

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East Hall (a recent view), A1000-39, Folder B6-45, p100

that no discord occurred among the workmen; nor is it known, that a drop of ardent spirit was used by an individual while employed in the work.”

The new structure, now East Hall, was built of native stone and on the same straightforward lines of West Hall, which it so well balances. It is 100 feet long, 56 feet wide, and four stories high, and originally contained 125 rooms. Though its two furnaces proved defective and stoves had to be provided for each room, the new building exceeded the Board’s anticipations as to cost and appearance. The Trustees also rejoiced that subscribers promptly met their payments to the building fund.

During the 1830’s three faculty members built homes on the campus: Professor Bacon “Claremont” in 1835, Professor Eaton “Woodland Height” in 1836, and Professor Conant “Beech Grove” or “Inwood” in 1838. Like the other buildings of the Institution, they were of native stone, and each was located on a rise of ground surrounded by trees.

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p. 99 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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tion;” no record remains, however, to show that it was awarded. Dr. Joseph Penny, a native Irishman who seems to have had some flair for landscaping and who had recently become President of Hamilton College, inspected the Institution in the summer of 1836, in company with Deacon Olmstead; whether he hoped to win the premium is not known. The natural beauty of the campus surpassed, the visitor believed, that of the majority of public institutions in the United States. He liked especially the grounds west of the buildings because of their varying smooth green slopes and shaded groves and dells. Cutting a few trees, he thought, would open fine vistas through to the buildings, and suggested new paths, the removal of fences which broke up the north surface of the Hill, and the planting of a few clumps of trees in that area. “The buildings,” he wrote, “though plain, are in good keeping with the objects for which they are designed; and this is the first requisite of good taste.” Covering them with a coat of pure lime and sand, followed from time to time by pure whitewash, he believed, would both provide protection and give an effective contrast to the green lawns.

Trustees and faculty approved Dr. Penny’s recommendations, and several of them Steward Edmunds put into effect. His labor supply was students who took their exercise with shovel or axe in hand. The young men were especially active in building paths and lining them with maples transplanted from the nearby woods; many are still standing. Most of the work was done under the direction of the Students Association and was usually without pay.

Until 1833 the buildings consisted of the present West Hall and the Cottage Edifice. The student body, meanwhile, had grown so large as to overcrowd them and applicants for admission had to be turned away. At its annual meeting in 1832 the Society voted to erect another dormitory. Since none of the bids was satisfactory, the Board accepted Deacon Burchard’s offer to purchase the materials, hire the workmen, and superintend construction, himself. Work was started in the summer of 1833, and by December the whole edifice was completed except for plastering and installing furnaces. Students contributed much of the labor. The total cost was approximately $6,000, nearly $2,000 less than the original estimate. Dr. Kendrick, reporting for the Board in 1834, wrote: “It is worthy of grateful acknowledgement, that the lives and limbs of the builders were providentially protected, and

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p. 98 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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Bangkok two years after his graduation. The money was in payment of his student loan even though his notes had been canceled when he sailed for the mission field.

Since collections and gifts failed to meet the needs of the Institution, the Trustees resorted to other measures. Charges for tuition and board were raised in the mid-’30’s. Special subscription campaigns were launched for salaries and debts, but it is not clear, however, what the cash returns actually were since it often happened that subscribers paid only part of their pledges. In 1837 the Trustees decided that it would be expedient to start a drive for a $50,000 endowment fund. Such a venture required caution because many Baptists, William Colgate among them, opposed an endowment on the ground that income from such a source would make the Institution independent of the churches whose agency it was and who had been its chief support. Dr. Kendrick, who was thoroughly familiar with this objection and also with the condition of the treasury, wrote with some asperity in the 1837 Annual Report “There is a happy medium between a state of penury, which paralyzes [sic] all the energies of the Society, and cripples the Institution in its faculty and students, and such a profusion of funds as allures to luxury, and induces to forgetfulness of a daily dependence on the Father of mercies.” Even the most sanguine Board members had no expectation of a “profusion of funds,” but they did hope that enough might be raised from a regular income to defray a part of the annual expenses. In 1839 the goal was raised to $100,000, but five years later not more than $10,000 had been collected. It was not until 1850 that efforts to establish an endowment succeeded.

The beauty of the campus and the village in their setting of rolling hills, broad valleys, woods, and farmland invariably drew appreciative comments from visitors and students. By the middle 1830’s the campus included about 170 acres. Most of it was given over to cultivated fields and pasture which supplied the Boarding Hall with dairy products, meat and vegetables; 50 acres were occupied by the Institution’s buildings and Samuel Payne’s home. Near the buildings were walks and groves often used by the students for retreat and meditation.

Landscaping did not seem to awaken the Trustees’ interest until 1836 when they appointed a committee for laying out the grounds. They also offered a prize of $70.00 for the best plan which united “the greatest beauty and simplicity with the least expense in consumma-

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p. 97 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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to agony of spirit in devising means for life.” In 1840 he wondered why the Baptists of the State of New York couldn’t raise $20,000 for the Institution if those of Maine and Massachusetts provided $50,000 for Waterville College. Two years later Dr. Kendrick wrote that the claims of ministerial education were “but faintly perceived and more feebly felt by the great body of the churches throughout the State” while the Board and faculty were carrying a burden which was “greater than they can long endure.”

Two of the Board’s most effective agents for collecting funds were James Edmunds, Jr., the steward, and Zenas Freeman. Both were on intimate terms with Dr. Kendrick and possessed remarkable energy and keen judgment. As they traveled up and down New York State presenting the claims of the Institution on the generosity of the churches and individuals, they constantly met competition from agents of other denominational interests, notably the American and Foreign Bible Society, and home and foreign missions. Adverse economic conditions, such as the Panic of 1837 and low crop prices, also reduced collections.

Auxiliary societies continued to be an important reservoir of funds. Those in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan sent contributions and students to Hamilton. There were also several women’s organizations, particularly the New York City Baptist Female Education Society, which channeled large sums to the treasury. Between 1836 and 1841 these groups contributed $10,000. The Young Men’s Education Society of New York and Brooklyn likewise deserves mention for its generous patronage.

Among the individuals who made sizable gifts were: Deacon Olmstead with two $1,000 scholarships; Deacon Colgate with one; Mrs. Hulda E. Thompson of Troy, New York, with one (the largest donation by a woman); and Stephen B. Munn of New York City, $1,500. John Rathbone, also of New York City, gave the Education Society 13,000 acres of mountain land in western Virginia, estimated to be worth between three and five thousand dollars. Justus H. Vipton, Class of 1833, missionary to the Karens in Burma, endowed out of his meager salary a $1,000 scholarship for the exclusive use of students preparing to become missionaries in the Far East. An even more exceptional gift was $100 from Mrs. Jane G. E. Reed, a missionary to Siam and window of Alanson Reed, Class of 1835, who had died in

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p. 96 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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rapidly mounted from approximately $7,500 to nearly three times that sum; the maximum was $27,000 in 1842. In addition to actual oper­ating costs, which had reached about $15,000 by 1845, annual outlays also included the purchase of capital assets, such as real estate and equipment, and interest on money borrowed. Income, meanwhile, fell behind to such an extent that by 1842 unpaid obligations aggregated $29,000. Until 1829 the Trustees had been able to keep expenses within bounds but thereafter the steady increase in enrollment necessitated additional buildings, equipment, and faculty, for all of which funds were not in hand. By 1842 the assets of the Society, however, were inventoried at approximately $108,000.

To satisfy themselves and other friends of the Institution that its fiscal affairs were economically managed, the Trustees reviewed at intervals expenditures and income and investigated the possibilities of retrenchment, only to decide against such a policy. The Education Society itself at the annual meeting in 1844, elected a committee to look into expenditures. Though recommending a few minor economies, the committee could find no fault with the Board’s management, whereupon the Society at its next meeting gave the Trustees a unanimous vote of confidence.

In defense of the Board, Dr. Kendrick pointed out that they might have limited expenditures to income and thus have avoided many perplexities. Yet, in his opinion, they had been eminently justified in not doing so in view of the imperative demand for trained preachers at home and abroad. He maintained that the “necessities of the rising ministry” were such that the Board could not make decisions “on the same principles that should govern the agricultural, mechanical, and mercantile business of the community.” The accumulated debt he regarded not as a loss but as an investment in “the kingdom.” With Dr. Kendrick’s views the investigating committee seems to have agreed.

The Annual Reports of the Education Society and the columns of the Baptist Register repeatedly carried lengthy appeals for money. The editor of the Register informed his readers in 1835 that the Institution was “in great want” and its professors “actually straitened for means to get along with their necessary family expenditures.” He asked the churches if they would stand idly by and let the Seminary, which had sent out men like the missionaries, Wade and Kincaid, languish and “see the conductors of it put to their wits end, and tasked

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