Tag Archives: Brown University

p. 155 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation in the Seminary and Professor of Evidences of Revealed Religion in the College met a cordial reception from President Taylor and the entire faculty. Son of a daring, impetuous Salem clipper-ship captain and a gentle, pious mother, he graduated at the age of twenty-one from Brown where President Wayland had grounded him in religion and logical, practical reasoning. During his student days at Newton, President Barnas Sears developed in him a genuine allegiance to intellectual freedom. His fiery temper and firm will he usually concealed, but both were constant. After four years of teaching he went to Germany to work under the theologians, Tholuck and Dorner; none of his colleagues had been able to enjoy the advantages of foreign study and travel. Members of his classes found, on his return, that his theology was somewhat misty, a characteristic which they laid to the German influences. In 1861 he followed Professor Spear as Librarian and served until 1868. The most valuable and significant period of his career both as teacher and administrator unfolded after he became President.

Phillip P. Brown, on his graduation in 1855, succeeded Professor Osborn as Principal of the. Grammar School. Prior to entering the sophomore class he had been in charge of a Choctaw mission school in the Indian Territory and later of the preparatory department of Shurtleff College, Alton, Illinois, where he was also enrolled as a student. He left the Madison campus in 1862 to become colonel of the 157th Regiment of New York Infantry, which he commanded with bravery at Gettysburg.

The Trustees appointed Hezekiah Harvey as Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Pastoral Theology in the Seminary and Civil History in the College in 1857. He had graduated from the College in 1845 and the Seminary two years later and had served as village pastor. A saintly man, often in ill-health, he was an effective teacher for students preparing for the ministry. In 1861 he became Professor of Biblical Criticism and Pastoral Theology. On Harvey’s return to the pastorate three years later, Dr. Albert N. Arnold, a contemporary of Dodge’s at Brown and Newton, and a New Testament Greek scholar, succeeded him and remained on the faculty until 1869.

Perhaps the most brilliant faculty member of the ’60’s was William Ireland Knapp who, upon graduation in 1860, was given a one-year appointment as the first Professor of Modern Languages. Since his

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

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

p. 59 – The expanded program 1833-1846

been separated from the Institution a little more than nine years,” he
lamented in 1845,

but I have not forgotten it nor is my attachment lessened by time and distance. I seem to myself like one buried alive. I hear some distinct reports concerning those I love but hold no direct communication with them…When connected with the institution its joys & sorrows, hopes & fears were mine. And they remain so still with the additional circumstance that I can do nothing for its benefit.*

Within three years, however, he was once more to share actively in “its joys & sorrows” as he heroically and successfully fought the attempt to remove it to Rochester.

John Fram Richardson, a native of Vernon, New York, and a member of the senior class, seems to have taken over some of Hascall’s work a few months before graduating in 1835. He acted as a “tutor” until 1838 when he was made Professor of the Latin Language and Literature. He was the first graduate to become a member of the faculty. He was also Secretary of the Faculty and the clear, neatly-written minutes attest his competence in that sphere. His friends remembered him as a refined, gentle and unobtrusive man and a fine teacher and scholar.

When Barnas Sears vacated the important chair of Biblical Theology in 1835, the Board, after several fruitless attempts to get a Baptist of equal eminence and ability, appointed John Sharp Maginnis in 1838. Born in Pennsylvania, of staunch Scotch-Irish immigrants, he spent his childhood in Ohio. When in his ‘teens he joined the Baptist denomination and for a short time assisted the indefatigable preacher and friend of the Institution, Joshua Bradley, in his church in Pittsburgh. To train for the ministry he studied at Waterville, Brown, and Newton. Prior to his appointment to the faculty he held pastorates at Providence, Rhode Island, and Portland, Maine. Maginnis’s ardent piety and logical thinking had commended him to the Board as likely to be the kind of professor they sought and his career on the Hill justified their selection. Spare, dignified, high-strung, and dyspeptic, he tempered the austerity of his harsh Calvinism with a gentle simplicity and friendliness and a keen wit which endeared him to students and colleagues. He delighted to detect errors in reasoning and his skillful use of the Socratic method, combined with his lucid theological lectures,

*Daniel Hascall, West Rutland, Vt., to George W. Eaton, July 8, 1845.