Tag Archives: Germany

p. 155 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

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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

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p. 77 – The expanded program, 1833-1846

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pointed out that the book collection was entirely inadequate to the needs and that where similar institutions had thousands of volumes, the Seminary had only a few hundred. To overcome this grave deficiency he announced that he and a few others had opened a subscription of $1,000 to be spent by the faculty for books and that $700 already had been pledged. In response to his appeal, the assembly subscribed the remaining $300 in a few minutes. Part of the money realized was sent to Professor Sears, who was then in Germany, for the purchase of theological tomes rarely on the market in the United States.

Encouraged by the results of the subscription campaign in 1833, the Trustees opened a second one three years later. Five thousand dollars was to be raised one hundred shares of $50.00 each, payable in five annual $10.00 installments would thus insure an income of $1,000 for five years for buying books. All members of the faculty, except Professor A. C. Kendrick, who was then on a trip in the South, were subscribers. Their high hopes were blasted by the Panic of 1837, but not before a $1,000 order had been placed with the German bookseller at Halle. After some items arrived the Executive Committee was forced to cancel the order for those not already shipped and Dr. Kendrick was obliged to appeal to William Colgate for a loan of $700 to cover the consignment which had already been received.

Nearly every Annual Report of the Education Society carried an appeal for the library, especially for volumes in English on theology, history, and literature. At the urgent request of the faculty, the Executive Committee in 1842 sent $500 to’ Professor Conant, then studying in Germany, to buy books, including the “principal writings of the Fathers.” Professor Raymond who apparently resented the purchasing of so many works in theology, especially those in foreign languages, complained that the library was “shamefully deficient” in standard titles in English literature. By 1846 the collection probably contained about 5,000 volumes, estimated as being worth around $3,500.

Professor A. C. Kendrick, who was chosen librarian by his colleagues in 1834, was intensely concerned about the responsibilities of his position. He observed that “Other institutions are making up the necessity of having an ample library &if we are not on the alert on this point they will draw the students.” Under faculty supervision he and

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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. 38 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

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teaching he occupied the pulpit in the village Baptist Church. Following his transfer from languages to theology in 1835, he went to Germany to study at Halle, Leipzig, and Berlin. Less than a year after his return in 1835 he resigned to join the Newton Faculty. Professors, students and townspeople greatly regretted his leaving. He subsequently became President of Newton, Horace Mann’s successor as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, President of Brown, and the first General Agent of the Peabody Fund.

Another young faculty member destined to make a prominent place for himself was Asahel C. Kendrick who succeeded Sears as Professor of Languages. The son of the Rev. Clark Kendrick of Vermont, he had come to Hamilton at the age of thirteen to live with his father’s cousin, Nathaniel, while he prepared for Hamilton College at the Academy. On his graduation from Hamilton in 1831, he became an instructor in the preparatory department of the Institution. After two decades of able teaching he was to continue his career at the University of Rochester.

For a few years in the 1820’s the Executive Committee hired upperclassmen and recent graduates as tutors to assist with the instruction of beginning students. Beriah N. Leach, Class of 1825, was employed while a senior with the understanding that he should have “sabbaths to himself, and … the privilege of attending the theological lectures….” When he left at the end of a year to take a pastorate, his classmate, Chancellor Hartshorn, succeeded him but after a two-year

As the Trustees reviewed the progress of the Institution to 1833, they took courage from the evidence they found that it “had been raised up by special providence of God, amidst the prayers and efforts of his people.” They could point to a widening patronage from churches and friends, an able and self-sacrificing faculty, an extensive campus and substantial buildings, and a growing student enrollment. The latter called for new facilities, and an expanded curriculum, which the Board was prepared to provide in the expectation that increased contributions to the treasury would cover the cost. Both the Trustees and Executive Committee could agree that the Institution had become “too important to the interests of Zion to be neglected and left to wither.”*

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1833, pp.3, 11.

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