Tag Archives: Daniel Hascall

p. 177 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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Samuel Colgate, p177

he served as President from 1861 until his death in 1897. Four years younger than his brother, he and James were very fond of one another and shared many interests, denominational and philanthropic and also artistic and horticultural. Samuel lived in Orange, New Jersey, where he had an estate called Seven Oaks after the village in Kent, England, associated with the Colgate family. He had flower and vegetable gardens, a conservatory, and greenhouses and he and Mrs. Colgate often had their big red brick house filled with guests.

Both James B. and Samuel Colgate, following the precedent set by their father, sought to interest their sons in the University. The first saw his son, James C., become a University Trustee in 1888, while Richard, the eldest of Samuel’s sons, was made an Education Society Trustee in 1889. Subsequently, Richard’s brothers, Sidney and Russell, joined him on the Society’s Board and Sidney, Russell and a fourth brother, Austen, became members of the University Board.

Along with Dr. Dodge, important figures on the campus in adminis-

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p. 130 – The removal controversy, 1847-1850

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August 10 setting aside the election of Education Society Trustees in 1848 and directing that the organization choose a new Board. When his order reached Hamilton on August 13 during commencement week, the Society’s Executive Committee, on the advice of Judges Mason and Nye, announced that the annual meeting would be held the next day. This move took the friends of Rochester by surprise since a three-week notice had been customary and consequently they were unable to muster many of their supporters.

More than sixty members of the Society assembled for a lengthy but courteous and dignified session in contrast to the one held the year before. They repealed the amendment to the constitution adopted in 1848 providing for the election of Trustees by classes and chose a new Board almost identical with that elected in 1847; Deacon William Cobb was again President. Removal was not openly discussed since Hamiltonians were content to await the decision of the court in the Havens and Wiley case. Professor Raymond considered the meeting “a most bald & bare face piece of trickery, practiced under the direction & control of … [local] lawyers, for the purpose of tying up the Ed. Soc. & making it over into the power of Hamilton citizens for ever & ever.” Some of the Trustees of both Boards, as disgusted as Raymond at the turn of events, proposed that the Baptists of the State meet in Albany to settle the Removal question once and for all.

The obstructionist legal tactics used by the friends of Hamilton were proving effective. The Babcock injunction had thwarted the Removalists at Albany in June, 1849, and Judge Allen’s final decision in August had unseated several of their Trustees from the Education Society Board. In the pending Havens and Wiley suit the temporary injunction of January 23, 1849, had prohibited both Boards from taking steps for removal. When this case came before Judge Allen on August 20, 1849, for final action, he ruled that the temporary injunction must be vacated since the plaintiffs could not show that they were founders of the Society or parties to the original contract for location and hence did not have sufficient interest to bring suit. He did indicate, however, that he believed the Society had no right to remove the institution.

At this juncture the friends of Hamilton turned to Daniel Hascall as a proper plaintiff to represent them. Of his signing the contract and his intimate connection with the Society there was, of course, no doubt. From the first he had become convinced that removal was wrong and

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p. 121 – The removal controversy, 1847-1850

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tees, in session daily except Sunday for the entire week. At their second sitting the Board asked if the endowment fund had been obtained, so that they might know whether to take action on the removal question. The Anti-Removalists were unprepared to make a formal report, but two days later friends of Rochester offered subscrip­tions, a site, and a bond amounting in all to $100,000. There was also before the Board a letter from Robert R. Raymond, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Syracuse, which stated that, though his fellow­ citizens did not wish to compete with any other locality, they could be relied upon for $50,000 and a site if the University were moved there.

Following these proposals Daniel Hascall spoke extemporaneously against removal, stressing especially the Education Society’s contract with the original donors of whom he was one of the few survivors. He had recently settled near Hamilton after residing for a decade in Vermont, and now with great zeal gave his support to the Anti­ Removal cause. Professor Eaton also defended Hamilton in an able three-hour speech. John N. Wilder, Elisha Tucker and Pharcellus Church responded briefly for Rochester.

Soon after the Board resumed its sitting Monday August 14, the Hamilton report was ready. While a committee examined the document, the other members approved an allocation of time so that the issue might be decided before the Education Society’s annual meeting the next day. The Trustees also listened to further remarks from Elder Hascall whom some of the Removalists interrogated so sharply as to draw pointed rebukes from Deacon Colgate and others. Nathaniel Kendrick and Betsey Payne, who like Hascall were original donors, sent letters expressing anxiety lest the location be changed.

The most stormy session occurred on Monday evening when the members met at the Boarding Hall to take final action. Though the public was not admitted, a large number of local citizens gathered outside the open windows to listen. The committee on the Hamilton proposal had reported in the afternoon that the residents of the village offered subscriptions totaling $28,000, half of which the committee considered of questionable value; a bond of $30,000 guaranteeing the collection of subscriptions; and a signed promise to use their best efforts to raise the remaining $20,000 within a year. To bring discussion to a head David R. Barton of Rochester moved that it would be expedient to change the location of Madison University from Hamilton

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p. 117 – The removal controversy 1847-1850

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regarded as moral duty and possessed of a tireless energy in speaking and writing, he easily assumed leadership of the opposition. He was, moreover, armed with the opinion of his friend, President Eliphalet Nott of Union College, who believed that relocation would violate the implied contract between the University and its donors who had assumed that Hamilton would be the permanent site and in support of the view cited the Dartmouth College case. Also, Dr. Nott favored a rural setting because of the moral, religious and economic advantages. Even if it should be that a large number of New York State Baptists supported removal, he questioned whether it would be expedient “to rupture the ties that bind so many hearts to the original Institution, and in disregard of the rights and feelings of its founders & patrons to attempt to force on them the acceptance of an interest in a new and distant location….” These points Eaton was to enunciate repeatedly in the next two years.

Eaton’s Candid Appeal proved the chief topic of discussion at a meeting of Western New York Baptists at Wyoming on January 11, 1848. Their reply, An Address to the Baptist Churches of the State of New York…, written by Pharcellus Church, was lengthy, sharp and sarcastic. It assailed “certain false reasonings and injurious imputations” emanating from Hamilton and castigated the non-Baptists of the village, whose interests were branded as essentially foreign and hostile to those of the University. Stung to the quick, one of the Hamiltonians responded with a letter to the Democratic Reflector, reminding Dr. Church,

 

You have partaken of the charities of the Institution at Hamilton; you have received its highest honors; now you have raised your snaky head, and thrust out your envenomed tongue, to destroy that which warmed you into life and influence.

 

The columns of the Reflector, the Baptist Register, and New York Recorder carried many letters and articles on the controversy, but few were as abusive as this censure of Dr. Church. The writers, their identity often concealed by pseudonyms, did not hesitate to stoop to personalities, so heated had their feelings become. Daniel Hascall, replying in a letter to the Register to statements made by Church, wrote that this “alumnus was not taught such random shots at Hamilton. If he has any more disclosures to make, I beseech him to confine himself to veritable facts.” Members of the faculty, particularly Eaton

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p. 58 – The expanded program 1833-1846

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woman’s magazine, wrote and translated half a dozen books, and assisted her husband in his research and writing.

Conant’s sound educational philosophy appeared clearly in his
Inaugural Address in which he declared:

The candidate for the ministry needs the same intellectual training as those who are preparing for other professions…in short, whatever belongs to the course of liberal education.

A capable teacher as well as scholar, he commanded the respect of his students. One of them confessed, “I did think I knew something about the Bible but Prof. Conant is fast convincing me to the contrary….”*To greet him on the evening of his return to Hamilton in 1843 after a year’s study in Germany, the students escorted him en masse from the village to his home on the campus, “Beech Grove,” and held a special assembly in the chapel in his honor. They also placed candles in all the windows of the buildings on the Hill, even breaking into unoccupied rooms to make their illumination complete.

The devoted Hascall resigned from the faculty in 1836. As Professor of Sacred Rhetoric since 1832, he had probably been teaching the English courses, particularly those relating to the preparation and delivery of sermons, as well as Latin. He had also been supervising the preparatory department. Not content merely with these duties, he had attempted to establish a manual-labor school at Florence, New York, which he hoped would be a feeder to the Institution. Deeply in debt, much of which seems to have incurred directly or indirectly in the service of the Education Society, and bowed down by family difficulties, he decided to devote all his energies to the enterprise in Florence. The Board, in accepting his resignation, revealed genuine appreciation of his sacrifices not only by passing resolutions of affectionate regard but also by assuming part of his indebtedness.

Through some undisclosed misfortune of which Hascall gave only a hint in a letter a few years later, his manual-labor school failed after a brief existence. Moving to Vermont, he occupied himself in managing the large farm of his second wife (his first, Sophia, the “Students’ Friend,” having died in 1836) and with collecting funds for the American and Foreign Bible Society. Unhappy with his lot he longingly thought of the Seminary and his friends in New York State. “I have

*Hezekiah Harvey to Lucy W. Loomis, Manilus, N.Y., Nov. 28, 1845.

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p. 55 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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Jonathan Wade, p55, image taken from the First Half Century of Madison University

Eugenio Kincaid, p55

books in them, edited Adoniram Judson’s noted Burmese dictionary, and compiled a Karen dictionary which he hoped would equal Judson’s in scope and value. Eugenio Kincaid, Wade’s classmate and fellow worker, achieved a reputation nearly comparable to Wade’s. He became so well known for his tact and ability that the Burmese king made him his diplomatic agent at Washington in 1856. He was also a successful fund-raiser for the institution at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, which was to become Bucknell University. A third member of the Class of 1822, John Glazier Steams, deserves notice as a leader among New York Baptists and a writer on anti-Masonry and church polity.

Alumni of later classes who should be mentioned in passing include: John Newton Brown, 1823, prominent New Hampshire pastor and educational secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society; Pharcellus Church, 1824, Rochester minister, author, and editor of important denominational journals; Jacob Knapp, 1824, well-known evangelist and indirectly father of Washingtonian temperance move­ment; and Jabez Swan, 1827 who was almost as renowned as Knapp for his work as a revivalist. William Dean, Grover S. Comstock, Hosea Howard and Justis H. Vinton, all of the Class of 1833, and Samuel S. Day, Class of 1836, were celebrated missionaries in the Far East.

Professor Hascall, John G. Stearns, and a few others, at a meeting in Utica in 1825, organized the Institution’s graduates into the Society of

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Missionary Society forms (p. 52)

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out that all of them had returned to orthodoxy to the great rejoicing of the whole community. This episode would seem to indicate skill in stimulating searching examination of theological beliefs.

The rise and development of student societies follow the pattern for such extracurricular activities at other American colleges and seminaries in organization, interests, and program. The first was the Philomathesian, founded in August, 1821, probably with the particular approval of Hascall who had belonged to a group somewhat like this one during his college days at Middlebury. Its interests were literary and theological and its objectives included training in public speaking, maintenance of a library, correspondence with missionaries and with similar organizations on other campuses, and an “inquiry into the most eligible fields of ministerial labor.” Designated members delivered sermons at weekly meetings which the audience and a student critic commented upon. The secretaries conducted an active correspondence with missionaries and the societies at Amherst, Williams, Hamilton, Andover, and other institutions. The library of over fifty volumes consisted chiefly of gifts and included not only religious books and periodicals but also many secular items and newspapers. The secretaries occasionally solicited subscriptions from editors in return for communications. The library served as a useful supplement to the Seminary’s meager collection of books and its remnants, distinguished by the society’s bookplate, may be located today on the University Library’s shelves.

The consecration of Wade and Kincaid, “first fruits of the Institution,” to missionary service in Burma gave a strong impetus to student interest in missions which resulted in the formation of the Missionary Society in 1824. It resembled the Philomathesian Society, which it absorbed seven years later, though its primary concern was missionary work. Besides seeking “the religious improvement of its members” and raising funds for missions it sought “information relative to the climate, productions, civil government, &c of the various nations of the earth “… [and also a] detailed account of their present moral condition and of the obstacles or the successes with which the introduction of the gospel in probability would be met.” In 1832 the organization changed its name to Society for Inquiry though its purpose remained, in general, the same. The members were divided into, nine groups in accordance with the months of the academic year. Each group investigated a

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p. 51 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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ing to leave the institution, offering reasons of ill health which appeared to be fabricated, laying himself under an oath to quit the institution, whether the Com. would consent or not. . . .” This case embarrassed the Executive Committee because he was under the special patronage of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary Board whose financial and moral support they leaned on heavily. Nonetheless, they refused to change their decision or to remove the public censure they had put upon him.

The exploits of the second, who was a “gay young blade” of the Institution in the 1820’s, seem to have leaked through students to the Executive Committee. The Committee’s investigations revealed “that he had paid his addresses to a number of young Ladies and more than one at the same time, had gained the affections of some and excited … and disappointed them, that he had proposed marriage to one and violated his promise and is now negotiating marriage with another.” They dismissed him at the risk of stirring up ill feeling toward the Institution in Vermont, his home state, because the case put in circulation there damaging rumors about the Seminary. From a modern perspective it appears that he was a naive, confused and indiscreet young man, against whom some of his associates vented their spite. After time had erased memories of his youthful improprieties and he had become a successful pastor, his Alma Mater gave him a master of arts degree, and, at the semi-centennial, in 1869, a D.D.

More serious to the Institution’s reputation than rumors of student misbehavior was the pall of Unitarianism which hung over it in 1830 and 1831. Kendrick’s senior class in Divinity, after thorough investigation, came to the conclusion that «the Lord Jesus Christ was not a divine personage, that though evidently superior to man, he was still less than God.” Such a defection from the trinitarian position stunned their fellows and the faculty. Kendrick, Hascall, Whitman, and Sears in a series of lectures vainly sought to dissuade them from such an alarming view, but the only result was to prevent the disease from contaminating the rest of the students. When a neighboring Baptist preacher also failed in his attempt to win the seniors back to “sound” doctrine, Kendrick advised them to cease investigating or discussing the issue for three weeks. Meanwhile, a revival in the Students’ Association fired the campus and spread to the village and nearby towns. When the seniors renewed their study of the question it turned

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p. 44 – Teaching and learning 1820-1833

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funds. They asked for books in philosophy, history, science, and theology though they gladly accepted any volume offered. The largest single contribution, about ninety books, was the entire collection of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary which came after that institution united with the one in Hamilton. Some can be identified by the bookplate of John Withington who gave them to the New York City school. In 1824 the Institution’s library contained about 400 titles, those in theology and Biblical studies holding chief place. There were also duplicate copies of texts for students too poor to buy their own. Under Hascall’s directions books were first purchased in 1819, but funds for buying books were always inadequate. The students were alive to the situation and in 1829 or 1830 voluntarily gave up using tea or coffee with their meals that the money saved might be “devoted (where it was most of all needed), to the enlargement of the library.” The Executive Committee noted “no sacrifice in  enjoyment” and a great gain “in health and intellectual powers.”* A few volumes bearing on the bookplates “anti-tea books” are still to be found in the University library.

Except in the early 1820’s when “young gentlemen not having the ministry in view, for the time being were admitted by paying reasonable bills for their privileges,” the Institution was closed to all non-ministerial students until 1839. This restriction was reasonable in view of the fact that the school was set up for training clergymen. Only those who could furnish evidence to the churches of which they were members and to the Executive Committee “of their personal piety and call to the gospel ministry” were to be accepted, according to the Constitution of the Education Society. In this way the “founders” and officers could show Baptists prejudiced against educated preachers training those selected by the churches themselves. The Society hoped that the churches would “not be unmindful of their power to guard the Institution from impositions” and cautioned them against recommending young when “of whose piety and call to preach they have any doubts” because, they asserted, the “glare of talents and ambitions in youth should never be substituted in the christian ministry for the one thing needful” [i.e. the call to preach].**

Many of the colorful characteristics of American student life in the

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report , 1830, 10.

** Baptist Education Society, Annual Reports , 1820, 7; 1822, 6; 1827, 4.

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p. 34 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

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carried heavy administrative as well as teaching responsibilities. Though these two senior members were the only ones in the group who served as trustees, other members acted with them on the Executive Committee or “took agencies” for collecting funds. Such an arrangement, which obviated lines of distinction between the administrative and teaching staffs, made for close cooperation in the common cause of education.

At first faculty organization was informal, though there is mention of a set of by-laws in the early ’20’s. In 1830 the Trustees, in place of the Executive Committee, were empowered by the Society to “appoint the Professors, determine their salaries and time of service.” Three years later the Society granted the faculty broader power “to administer in general the internal government of the Seminary” subject to approval by the Board.

As might be expected at a seminary supported by a denomination not entirely cordial to the idea of a trained clergy, faculty salaries were low. During 1822-23 Hascall received $350. The next year $400 became the standard salary for professors and remained so until 1829  when they were granted $500. The average income of college teachers for the period was about equal to that of clergymen. Alfred Bennett, one of the best known Baptist ministers of the state, never received over $400, often only $300, with some of it in produce. However, professors at Auburn Theological Seminary (Presbyterian), Brown, and Amherst earned from $200 to $600 more than Hascall and his  high-minded associates. The latter were reasonably contented with small incomes. Their great purpose was to train as many young men as
possible to become the spiritual leaders of Christians, from Hamilton to Burma.

Hascall’s teaching career started in 1818 when he began to receive young men into his home to study for the ministry. Most of the ten students present at the opening of the Seminary in the ‘brick academy” in 1820 had studied with him privately. His appointment as the first teacher seems to have been tentative, hut in 1822 the Executive Committee “Voted that Brother Daniel Hascall be considered as has long been the design of this Committee, Professor of Languages in this Institution.” From 1828 to 1832 he also taught “Natural Philosophy.”

Hascall’s background and experience fitted him very well for instructing

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