Tag Archives: Hamilton Academy

p. 76 – The expanded program, 1833-1846

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Fairfield, New York, gave his course of lectures in chemistry, both on the Hill and at the Hamilton Academy. Professor Taylor took over chemistry instruction in 1843. Astronomy always had a place in the curriculum throughout this period, but geology and mineralogy seem to have been offered only in 1836. A course in biology based on William Smellie’s Philosophy of Natural History was given from 1833 to 1835.

Unfortunately, when Professor Taylor had gotten the work in science nicely developed he resigned and recent graduates added to the faculty as tutors attempted to carry on in his place. The students resented this makeshift arrangement which was to last until the 1850’s.

The quality of instruction in the Institution’s two-year preparatory course proved to be so good in the mid-’40’s that the Hamilton Academy, which a decade before had been rated second in the state by the Board of Regents, suffered severely from the competition. The office of principal was abolished in 1838 and the regular faculty assumed responsibility for the elementary work in their respective fields and either conducted classes themselves or directed advanced students who served as assistants.

The eight-year course embracing the three departments of the Institution had no counterpart. Professor Raymond wrote of it in the Society’s Annual Report in 1842:

 

The organization is certainly unique-strikingly so. Its precise model is not to be found, we believe, in any other school, secular or religious, at home or abroad. But the Board…did not feel bound by existing models. Their eye was fixed on the specific wants of our own zion; and, while they were not negligent of, the lights of experience or unsolicitous to secure the counsels of the wise, their measures were all finally adopted with exclusive reference to those wants. The result of many years anxious and prayerful deliberation, of very many distinct and cautious and (almost invariably). unanimous decisions, is before us in the plan of the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution- a place so manifestly the work of Divine Providence and so susceptible of justification in all its essential features, that we think none but the most ureflecting could condemn it on the irrelevant, ground of non-conformity to institutions formed under different circumstances for different ends.

The efforts of the faculty and trustees to build up the library failed to advance with the development and improvement of the curriculum. At the Education Society’s annual meeting in 1833 William Colgate

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Regular course expanded from 3 to 4 years (p. 40)

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During the early 1820’s many students unqualified for the course took preparatory work elsewhere, often at the Hamilton Academy, and then entered a two-year program from which the classics were omitted. In most cases the shorter curriculum was advised only for older students who felt they could not spend the extra year in school.

By 1827 the Executive Committee was considering setting up a special preparatory department, probably because they found that many students with indifferent preparation were greatly handicapped for either the regular or the shorter course. They had in view a non-sectarian academy, open to any young men, but before they took any definite steps they wanted the approval of the Board of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary. The Board vetoed the project on the ground that such an auxiliary to the Seminary, secular in character, might alienate its friends. Accordingly, since concurrence of the New York City Board had been made a requisite for inaugurating the project, the idea was give up.

To meet the actual situation on the campus, however, the Executive Committee in 1829 did provide for a year’s preparatory work and thus expanded the regular course from three to four years. The two-year shorter English course they retained for “those whose age and circumstances” prohibited the longer one. The preparatory work consisted of English grammar, arithmetic, geography, history, and beginning Latin and Greek. In the first year of the regular course, the classics were continued and rhetoric, geometry, natural philosophy, astronomy, and church history added. In the second, Greek was continued and Hebrew and Biblical criticism begun. The third year was devoted to Biblical criticism, exegesis, logic, and intellectual and moral philosophy; the last entirely to systematic and pastoral theology and homiletics. Throughout the course the students had exercises in composition and declamation.

Because of “the demands both on the part of the community and of the students resorting to this Seminary for a more sound and thorough education” the courses offered in 1830 were enriched and in 1833 a college course introduced. The latter change was a momentous departure since it meant the Institution ceased being solely a seminary and was ready to adapt itself to the patterns of a liberal arts program. Five of the most promising students had already left in order to take a full college course elsewhere and ten more were preparing to follow them.

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p. 37 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

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measured speech until his subject roused him to excitement. He had a cautious, involved style in writing which appears in his chief publications, the Annual Reports of the Education Society. He had slight regard for “elegant literature” which he probably regarded as frivolous. Religion was his chief interest and “his library was the common resort for the solution of doubtful theological questions. . . .”

Although Kendrick was fully occupied with his duties as professor and President and as Secretary of the Education Society, he found time to support some of the reforms of the day. He and Hascall were both members of the Madison County Colonization Society, Kendrick the first president. He also belonged to the county temperance society, was one of the Board of Curators of the New York Lyceum, and a  Trustee of Hamilton College. The University of Vermont granted him  an A.M. and Brown University both an A.M. and D.D.

Zenas Morse, A.B., Hamilton College, 1821, an instructor in the Hamilton Academy, assisted Hascall with Latin and Greek when the classes grew too large for him to handle alone in the fall of 1821. This arrangement lasted four years, after which Morse became principal of the Academy, a position he filled capably for many years.

Seth Spencer Whitman, Professor of Languages and Biblical Literature, 1828-1835, had been one of the most promising students of the Seminary. A member of the Class of 1823, he left before graduation at the suggestion of the Executive Committee to complete his studies at Hamilton College. The Committee even agreed to aid in defraying his expenses on condition that he refund them by his services as teacher in  the Seminary. After taking his degree at Hamilton he went to Newton Theological Seminary for three years. On his return, the Executive  Committee expressed their high regard for him by asking him to sit with them and by providing that Hascall should introduce him to the assembled students and that Kendrick should make the prayer after Whitman had delivered his inaugural address.

Whitman’s classmate at Newton, Barnas Sears, who came to the faculty in 1829 as Professor of Languages, was later to achieve a greater national reputation than any other member of the teaching staff in this period. Young, popular, and brilliant, he had a brief pastorate at Hartford, Connecticut, between his graduation from Brown and his professorship at the Institution. In addition to

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p. 25 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

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and students. Like many of them on the frontier, this school relied heavily on aid from friends in the East, especially New York City and the Hudson Valley.

The outline of the Seminary’s fiscal affairs for the period ending in 1833 is fairly clear, though the details are somewhat confusing. Annual receipts increased from $565.76 in 1820 to $6,879.99 in 1833, and expenses from $477.14 to $7,154.94. The rise in enrollment from ten students in 1820 to one hundred and twenty-four, thirteen years later and the enlargement of the teaching staff from one to six during this period explain these figures in large part. Most of the income had to be raised annually by agents’ collections and by subscription of patrons; frequently the latter turned into only partially realized promises. When the Seminary opened, a large amount of the income had been consumed in aid to indigent students, or beneficiaries, as they were called. About 1830 their number declined to fifteen out of the total enrollment of eighty. By this time the faculty salaries had become the chief item of expense though none exceeded $500.

The greatest deficit came in 1829 when the Society was $695.38 in arrears, but 1832 was probably the most trying time because the treasury was practically empty and a new building had become immediately necessary to house the increasing student body. In the emergency the Trustees hired Elon Galusha, who had just concluded a financial campaign for Columbian College, in Washington, D.C., to raise a building fund. The constant appeals for money for missions, Bible translations, and other causes, showered on the some 60,000 Baptists of the 600 churches of the state made the prospects dark. The open neglect or lukewarm attitude toward education of ministers, still common in many quarters, was also discouraging. However, Galusha, who had the reputation of never taking “hold of anything without making the most of it,” completed his assignment and thus secured the new building which went up in 1834.

For the first three years the Institution occupied the third story of the “brick academy,” located on the northwest corner of what are now known as Broad and Pleasant Streets. The village school used the first story and the Hamilton Academy, a private secondary school, the second. The addition of a third story had been one of the conditions under which the Trustees had located their institution in Hamilton. Seminary students were to use it only until the citizens should provide

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14 accepted for ministerial training (p. 14)

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Meanwhile, the Executive Committee had been receiving several applications for assistance from young men desiring ministerial training. By May, 1820, fourteen had been accepted as beneficiaries of the Society, that is, all or part of their expenses were paid out of its treasury. Since the Society did not yet have its own institution, they studied with Hascall, Kendrick, Clark, and the Rev. Elon Galusha in Whitesboro.

With the selection of Hamilton as the site for the school, it became necessary to obtain a full-time instructor. The Executive Committee sought in vain to engage at least three of the most promising young men in the denomination, one of whom, Stephen W. Taylor, some years later, became an outstanding teacher and president of their institution as well as the first executive officer of Lewisburg (Bucknell) University. The Committee finally fell back on Daniel Hascall “whose services thus far have been acceptable.” With ten young men, he began formal instruction on May 1st, 1820. Meeting in the third story over the Hamilton Academy, erected by the citizens of the village as per their agreement, Hascall, his students, and classroom represented the embodiment of the ideal cherished by the founders of the Education Society since 1817.

Colgate University had now come into being, though in a form vastly different from that of 1969. The first stage in its development was over. Daniel Hascall, Nathaniel Kendrick and their associates on the Executive Committee could report that though they were conscious “of a want of wisdom, to manage with any correctness, the unadjusted and complicated concerns of this infant Institution” they had “been much encouraged in the belief, that God has hitherto made it the care of his fostering providence.”*

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1820, 3, 7.

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Charter passes (p. 13)

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | Leave a comment

members in favor and 35 against, Root contenting himself by voting with the latter. Wakeley wrote years later that he never knew whether the Speaker called the General to the chair by design or “whether it was a kind providence leading in a way to save the bill which would probably have been lost had Root been on the floor …” The Senate passed it, apparently without opposition; and on March 5, 1819, it became a law,* with the Council of Revision’s approval.

The charter gave the Society the usual privileges granted corporations but restricted it to ownership of property with an annual income of not more than $5,000 and prohibited the Society from making “any law or regulation affecting the rights of conscience.”


View Selecting a location for the Society’s institution in a larger map

Selecting a location for the Society’s institution was another matter of concern. The committee on this subject, chosen in 1818, was unable to agree though they had investigated the villages of Elbridge, Throopsville, Skaneateles, Fabius, Sangerfield, and Hamilton, noting in each place climate, soil, accessibility, economic conditions and the state of the local Baptist church. They also considered the bid of Peterboro but do not seem to have made a special visit there. A second committee revisited these communities and reported to the Executive Committee which decided on Skaneateles, provided the people of that village would raise $10,000. But when the Trustees learned that the citizens required that the seminary should operate as an academy and be open to local students, they felt it necessary to seek another site, since they believed that the Constitution of the Society authorized instruction only for prospective preachers. Confronted with the problem a second time, they wavered between Peterboro and Hamilton. The minutes of the meeting, November 3, 1819, read:

After mature deliberation, on receiving ample securities from Hamilton, that they will furnish by the first of May next, the upper story of the academy in the village of Hamilton, well furnished for
the use of the Society, and in four years procure the whole building or one equal to it, estimated at $3500, and $2500 to be paid in board at 12 shillings per week in five equal annual payments provided the
Society shall require it in that time or in a longer period.
Voted unanimously, that the Theological Seminary be permanently located in or near the Village of Hamilton, Co. of Madison and State of New York.**

 

* New York State Laws (1819) Chapt. 35.
** Baptist Education Society of the State of New York, Trustees, Minutes of
Meeting, Nov. 3, 1819, a loose ms.

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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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