Tag Archives: Daniel Hascall

p. 8 – Origin

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daniel-hascallPresident Nathaniel Kendrick, p8, p17jonathan-olmstead

 

 

Clark was pastor at Sangerfield, a few miles east of Hamilton, and Hull was a physician and a member of Kendrick’s church in Eaton. Though Hascall, Kendrick and Clark must have sought support for the enterprise among the associations whose meetings they attended prior to the date set for gathering at Hamilton, their efforts appear to have been disappointing. The Otsego Association seems to have been the only one to respond, devoting its entire Circular and Corresponding Letter for 1817 to the topic of ministerial education. When the date for the Hamilton meeting arrived, Otsego was the only association, aside from Madison, to be represented. It is possible that many men who may have given the project their blessing informally, declined to travel to Hamilton over muddy September roads. Further explanation for the attendance of only thirteen at the meeting is found in the prevalent hostility to an educated clergy. Finding their number so small, those present convened, not at the “Baptist Meeting-House” as advertised, but in the north parlor of Jonathan Olmstead’s home about a mile south of the village.

In addition to Olmstead, Hascall, Kendrick, Clarkand Charles W. Hull, there were: Samuel Payne, Elisha Payne, John Bostwick, Thomas Cox, Samuel Osgood, Amos Kingsley, Peter Philanthropos Roots, and Robert Powell. Nine were members of the Hamilton church, two of the Eaton church, and one each of the churches of Sangerfield in Oneida

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A meeting at the home of Samuel Payne (p. 7)

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England Baptists with whom he was in touch, and from similar activities of the Baptists in New York City and elsewhere. Thus, when he read the eloquent Corresponding Letter of the Boston Association for 1816, he was encouraged to dream of an educational institution in the West urged by Jeremiah Chaplin. When he broached the idea to his old friend, Nathaniel Kendrick, who visited the vicinity in the fall of 1816, he found a sympathetic listener. Kendrick, pastor of the church at Middlebury, Vermont, though not a college man, had studied with the Rev. Samuel Stillman of Boston and other able divines. When in 1817 he settled at Eaton, a few miles over the western ridge of hills from Hamilton, further detailed discussion was possible.

The first step toward forming an education society was taken in May, 1817, when five or six “Ministers and Brethren” met in Hamilton at the home of Samuel Payne “to consider the propriety and importance of affording assistance to young men, in obtaining a competent education, who are called of God to preach.” A committee of four reported further:

After prayerful deliberation on the subject, it was the unanimous opinion of those present, that to promote the future usefulness of those whom God is raising up to be Ministers of the New Testament, some provision should be made for their instruction.

The undersigned were appointed to consult with Fathers and Brethren not present, and to obtain information from several Theological Institutions recently established by the Baptist denomination in other places; and advertise another meeting. These directions have been attended to, and the subject is assuming an interest with many, beyond what was at first anticipated.

We hereby give notice, that the next Meeting will be held at the Baptist Meeting-House in Hamilton, on the fourth Wednesday in September next, at ten o’clock A.M. at which time a sermon may be expected on the occasion.

The Ministers and Brethren from the several Associations in the country, as far as will be Practicable, are respectfully solicited to attend.

Joel W. Clark
Nathaniel Kendrick
Charles W. Hull
Daniel Hascall*

*American Baptist Magazine, I (November, 1817), 238. This notice was printed on the cover of the Western New York Baptist Magazine, II (Aug., 1817), though no copy with a cover is known to exist.

 

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Hamilton’s first newspaper, the Hamilton Gazette (p. 6)

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knew them well wrote that “in those important aids which human learning and intellectual culture afford to the servants of the gospel, they were comparatively deficient.” “So illiterate” was one “at the time he commenced in the ministry, that it was difficult for him to read a sentence intelligibly.” His experience of the want of education “and the privation and embarrassment he had suffered as a consequence” made him a warm advocate of ministerial education for the young men who were to succeed him.*

The time was ripe for taking action, not only because the need was recognized but also because economic conditions were favorable. The current boom in agricultural prices due to extensive crop exports to Europe and to the high cash prices recently paid for provisions in the state during the War of 1812 brought prosperity. Moreover, a new wave of revivalism strengthened the churches which were increasing in size and numbers; material and spiritual prosperity went hand in hand.

Payne’s Settlement shared in the “new impulse … which resulted in the up swinging of various enterprises.” Serving as the trading center of an agricultural community, the hamlet naturally throve when farmers received high prices for their products. Its business was probably augmented by the new Hamilton Skaneateles Turnpike. Also, its accessibility helped to make it a common meeting place for the militia of the vicinity. Several new buildings, many of brick, had been erected, among them a two-story structure for the recently established Hamilton Academy. The population had so increased by 1816 that it was possible to incorporate the settlement as a village called Hamilton. The same year saw the beginning of the first newspaper, the Hamilton Gazette. When the Baptist meeting house was burned to the ground in 1818 the church was sufficiently thriving that it could not only rebuild in less than eleven months but raise the salary of the preacher as well. Surely, no time could have been more propitious for the founding of the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York.

Daniel Hascall, an alumnus of Middlebury College, Class of 1806, had been pastor of the church since 1813. For a long time he had been  concerned about raising the educational standard of the Baptist clergy.  His interest received stimulus from the educational efforts of the New

* John Peck & John Lawton, An Historical Sketch of the Baptist Missionary Convention of the State of New York (Utica, 1837), 55, 203-204.

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Samuel Payne settles in Hamilton (p. 4)

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Hebrew and Greek. New seminaries must be erected and endowed since Brown University, founded in 1764 under Baptist auspices, was no longer adequate for the needs of the denomination; no divinity was taught there and at that college as at “almost every other literary institution a large proportion of the students are destitute of the grace of God.” He believed that four seminaries should be set up, one in New England, one in the Middle States, one in the South, and one in the West. Indigent students should be supported by special funds. Until these institutions should be established young men should receive private instruction from settled pastors as heretofore.

Chaplin’s Corresponding Letter inspired Daniel Hascall, pastor of the First Baptist Church at Hamilton, New York, to consider Central New York an ideal location for the seminary in the West. Following the American Revolution this territory was laid out in townships open for settlement. The township later to be known as Hamilton, like most others, fell into the hands of speculators, among whom was Dominick Lynch of New York. Even before the speculators began to advertise their holdings in the newspapers, accounts of the extent and fertility of this land had penetrated New England through reports of Indian traders, missionaries, and soldiers who had seen service on the frontier during the war.

Among the first families to locate in Central New York was that of Hugh White of Middletown, Connecticut, who in 1785 founded Whitestown a few miles west of the present city of Utica. The soil’s fertility and amazingly cheap prices were not to be resisted. Settlers of Madison County wrote home to Rhode Island that wild land was from $4.00 to $7.00 an acre. One observer in Albany noted in 1792 that the emigrants appeared to be people of substance and moved to their new homes well equipped with household furniture, tools, and stock.

Within four years, 1791 to 1795, twelve of the original fourteen townships of Madison County had been opened. Settlers came from eastern New York and all the New England states, Connecticut furnishing pioneers for nearly every town. Hamilton was first settled in 1794 by Samuel Payne who bought a tract in this area from Dominick Lynch. Payne came of a prominent eastern Connecticut family, some members of which had moved to Cornwall, in the western part of the state, and later to Dutchess County, New York, prior to the Revolution. At its conclusion, he with his brother,Elisha, moved to Whites-

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