Tag Archives: First Baptist Church at Hamilton

p. 207 – Student Life, 1869-1890

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 207 – Student Life, 1869-1890

lenged. In 1878 the Democrats objected to their voting and three were arrested. On the grounds that they had severed their connections with their former homes and lived in Hamilton and supported themselves by their own efforts and with scholarship assistance it was later held they met the residence qualifications for the franchise. With the approach of presidential elections students organized their own political clubs and in one campaign, at least, went out stump-speaking for their candidates.

Townspeople and most of the students and faculty attended the regular Sunday service at the Baptist Church; classes of the three divisions of the University had their assigned seats in the gallery. The pastors of the period-Walter R. Brooks, James M. Stiller, Stephen H. Stackpole and William Newton Clarke-were popular with the stu-

First Baptist Church c. 1900, Hamilton History 2, Folder 62, p207

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Posted in Chapter 10, p. 207, Student Life, 1869-1890

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p. 109 – The removal controversy, 1847-1850

Posted on May 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 109 – The removal controversy, 1847-1850

ments.” The vote of the Education Society Board on August 19th was judged illegal, apparently on the ground that the theological professors already had tenure as established by the University Board on June 9, 1847. Henceforth, the theological professors were to be considered as being on regular appointment. The brethren who had originally refused to back Maginnis were reported to have broken down completely and “repented of their folly.” The broader vision of their non­ resident associates, such as Friend Humphrey, Ira Harris, and John N. Wilder prevailed.

When the citizens of Hamilton learned that Professor Maginnis might resign because of the unpleasantness, over 120 signed a public letter urging him to continue his connection. They commented upon the luster his teaching ability gave to the institution and the loss the community would sustain. His appreciative reply, dated November 9, 1847, and published in the local paper, is especially interesting in view of the fact that some weeks earlier, he had already participated in the initial steps for removing the University to Rochester. He wrote that the occasion for the resignation no longer existed, and that he was sincerely attached to the institution and the village whose citizens, with few exceptions, had always shown him and his colleagues “those marks of respect and kindness which are always indicative of a refined and cultivated people.”

The Maginnis case was a natural outgrowth of the somewhat strained relations between the faculty and the village Baptist Church. The church itself was in an unhealthy condition as is shown by the short tenure of its pastors in the 1840’s. One, resigning in 1842, assailed the congregation for harboring “mischief makers” while both of his successors left amid bitter feelings. There was a conservative element among members whose “old puritanical notions” led them to oppose many of the liberal tendencies held by the faculty. They were the ones who had sided with Jacob Knapp and they must have rankled in 1845 when the professors and a few others withdrew to form the Seminary Church on the Hill. Perhaps they also frowned upon the cordiality which existed between the faculty, especially Professor Maginnis, and St. Thomas Church, organized by the Episcopalians in 1835. Another point of irritation was their criticism of faculty social life, about which unfriendly rumors reached even the northern part of the State. An informant in that region wrote Dr. Kendrick of difficulty in raising

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First Compact (p. 107)

Posted on May 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on First Compact (p. 107)

innovation contrary to the purpose of the Education Society. After the University charter had been granted in 1846, some of the Society’s trustees, fearful that secularization would go farther, even suggested the document be returned to the Legislature. Since both Boards at first were unable to adjust their relations to each other in such a way as to establish what were considered proper safeguards for ministerial education, they had tabled that troublesome question for a year.

In June and August, 1847, both Boards, the faculty, and the Education Society eventually worked out an arrangement, known as the First Compact, which became effective on the first of September. It provided that the Society should grant the University the use of its property and that the University should maintain a suitable course for “candidates for the Christian ministry” and allow beneficiaries to have rooms rent-free. The faculty was to be considered a single unit responsible to the University Trustees. As a means of retaining control of ministerial education the Society required the University Board to appoint and dismiss such theological professors as it should designate.

It was the question of faculty appointments which first produced serious friction. The professors in the collegiate department had been formally appointed under the new charter as a matter of course in June 1846. The University Board took no action on the theological professors, however, until a year later when they were then made members of the University faculty, but on a temporary basis until their duties and titles should be determined.

Meanwhile, some of the Baptists in Hamilton, among them Jacob Knapp, the evangelist, came to see in the formal appointment of the theological faculty an opportunity to remove Professor Maginnis from the chair of Biblical Theology. This aristocratic, tall, bent, and ailing man had aroused their enmity by his intellectual approach to religion and his uncompromising Calvinism. Knapp, of course, had not forgotten that Maginnis had been his chief opponent in the village church quarrel a few years before. When information on the Education Society Board’s meeting on August 19, 1847, leaked out, the strategy of Maginnis’s enemies was apparent. The Board had convened, with only 13 out of 31 members present, probably most of them resident Trustees, to nominate theological professors for final appointment by the University Board in accordance with the First Compact. Conant and Eaton were chosen unanimously but only four votes were cast for

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Posted in Chapter 7, p. 107, The Removal Controversy, 1847-1850

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Jacob Knapp urges church to declare slavery a sin (p. 70)

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on Jacob Knapp urges church to declare slavery a sin (p. 70)

though at the same time lashing out at them on the platform and in the newspapers. He asserted that wherever they exerted “their influence, there languishes the cause of slaves, and there abound apologists for the oppression.” Eaton, who had a favorable impression of the more enlightened slaveholders as a result of teaching in Virginia in his youth, seems to have been chosen to represent his colleagues in disputes with Smith.

When the Peterboro reformer became incensed in 1841 at a visit to the campus of the Southern Elder Jonathan Davis, as well as at the suppression of the third antislavery society and the failure of the Seminary to support his new Liberty party, Eaton defended the faculty in a long letter to the Hamilton Palladium. He made it clear that, since they had not identified themselves with the abolitionists, it did not follow that they were pro-slavery. Elder Davis, he pointed out, had not come to reconcile the students to slavery, nor had he mentioned the subject on the Hill. Professor Maginnis, whose guest he had been, heartily opposed Negro servitude, but was convinced that the evil could be righted peaceably only with the help of Southerners whom Northerners should treat courteously and invite to discuss the subject without rancor or bitterness. Such an approach to the problem failed to make any impression on Smith whose avowed and constant purpose was “to abolitionize the public mind.”

The Hamilton Baptist Church, like the Seminary, refused to become involved in the slavery question. Jacob Knapp, the firebrand evangelist, had bitterly denounced a representative of the American Colonization Society from its pulpit in 1841 and a year later urged the church to declare slavery under all circumstances a sin. After extensive discussion, in which it was evident that the members agreed with his sentiments, they nevertheless decided against “the passing of any specific resolutions on the subject of slavery &to such a mode of church action; in general” and concurred “in the opinion, that by their public profession of Religion, &by their church covenant, they have clearly declared themselves against slavery as a sin, together with all other moral evil.”

Though the church avoided dissension on the slavery question, Knapp, with his genius for controversy, was able to plunge it into bitter turmoil on his own account. A plain, uncouth, loud, and uncompromising revival preacher, he was widely known throughout the

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Posted in Chapter 4, p. 70, The Expanded Period, 1833-1846, timeline

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First Baptist Church of Hamilton established (p. 5)

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | Comments Off on First Baptist Church of Hamilton established (p. 5)

town.

They may have learned about the region from a brother, Barnabas Payne, who saw service at Fort Stanwix, about ten miles west. They, themselves, were also veterans and conceivably could have been on duty in the area. In 1795 Elisha, and mutual friends from Whitestown and Connecticut, joined Samuel in his new location. Elisha bought a large tract of land north of that held by his brother and here founded Payne’s Settlement, so-called because of Elisha’s interest and activity in developing the village. The leading citizen of the community, he erected the first frame building, opened a tavern where the first town meeting was held, and served as one of the first judges of the Court of General Sessions for Common Pleas.

Their material needs provided for, the settlers turned to matters of religion. In 1796, only two years after Samuel Payne’s arrival, they met at his home to establish the First Baptist Church of Hamilton, for nearly a generation the only church in the village. Elisha Payne for some reason did not join until three years later yet he, Samuel, and their friend, Jonathan Olmstead, were its pillars. They and six of the others, who later formed the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York, helped to make it one of the strongest in the State and the “Mother Church of Colgate University.” The church could report in 1796 that with the aid of “divine providence” they were changing “the howling desert into a fruitful land….”*

Not content with providing a religious organization for themselves, the Hamilton Baptists in 1807 joined with other members of the denomination in the surrounding region to form a society to send preachers to the Holland Purchase area south of Lake Ontario and into the Canadian peninsula. The organization even provided a minister and teacher for their neighbors, the Oneida Indians. Probably no other agency was as influential in promoting the progress of Baptists in Western New York.

In 1795 the denomination had only about 500 members, fifteen churches, seven preachers, and one small meeting house in the upstate area. By 1817, however, there were approximately 28,000 members, 310 churches, and 230 ministers. Their preachers, though devoted and able were, for the most part, poorly educated. A contemporary who

* Ashbel Hosmer and John Lawton, A View of the Rise and Increase of the
Churches Composing the Otsego Association (Whitestown, 1800), 11-21.

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Samuel Payne settles in Hamilton (p. 4)

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | Comments Off on Samuel Payne settles in Hamilton (p. 4)

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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