Tag Archives: Joel Smith Bacon

p. 103 – Administrative problems and incorporation, 1833-1846

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the Removal Controversy of 1847-50. The Board, however, maintained that the advantages of a charter would accrue to ministerial as well as general education. Once the issue had been decided, Dr. Kendrick in his usual fashion gracefully accepted their judgment as final and continued to cooperate in the common enterprise.

In 1843, when a second attempt was made to get a charter, Dr. Kendrick visited Albany to lobby for the project. The petition, this time for Madison College, was introduced in the Assembly in January. By April the bill for incorporation, when it had advanced to a third reading, was again rejected. The objection now raised was the alleged lack of a proper body of trustees. Neither The Education Society, an organization open to anyone who paid the $1.00 annual membership fee, nor its Board, which was elected on a yearly basis, was considered a satisfactory agent to hold a charter.

The students, eager to get degrees on finishing their college work, had watched the progress of events in Albany with no little interest. Since no charter seemed to be forthcoming, the faculty endeavored in 1843 to make arrangements with Brown University to grant degrees to collegiate-department graduates. Though President Wayland favored the proposition, the negotiations failed, and the faculty applied to Columbian College (George Washington University) in Washington, D.C. Columbian’s new president, Joel S. Bacon, who had been their colleague from 1833 to 1837, was able to induce his trustees in 1844 to accede to the request. The arrangement provided that Columbian would confer degrees on collegiate-department graduates whom the Institution’s faculty certified. Members of the classes of 1844 and 1845 and several men who had graduated earlier received Columbian diplomas.

Despite the legislative rebuffs of 1840 and 1843 the faculty did not abandon hope of a charter. In 1845 they recommended that the Board seek incorporation as Chenango College. Their recommendation was carried out the next January, and on March 17 the Assembly passed a bill by a vote of 89 to 13 to establish Madison University, named for the county in which it was situated. Eight days later the Senate accepted it unanimously, and on March 26, 1846, Governor Silas Wright affixed his signature. No reference to any legislative debates on the bill has been found. It may be assumed, however, that Assembly­man Ira Harris, prominent Albany political leader active in Baptist

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p. 60 – The expanded program, 1833-1846

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 60 – The expanded program, 1833-1846

made him famous as a teacher. Conservative and independent in his views, once he had formulated them, he was not a man to be “persuaded otherwise,” nor did he hesitate to express his opinions, let the chips fall where they would. These, characteristics made him a formidable adversary whenever he chose to do battle. Since his position was considered second to that of Dr. Kendrick, he had hardly taken up his duties when he began to act as Chairman of the Faculty in the absence of the former.

As early as 1830, in response to student demands for instruction in science, the Executive Committee,”having long had an eye upon a brother of much promise,” selected Joel Smith Bacon as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. He had graduated from Hamilton College in 1826 and was then studying at Newton. It was not until 1833, however, after completing a brief period as president of Georgetown College in Kentucky, that he accepted the offer. A year later, in accordance with a previous understanding with the Board, he exchanged his chair for that of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy. After a teaching career of only four years, he resigned in 1837 to go to Massachusetts for the settling of his father-in-law’s estate. From 1843 to 1854 he was president of Columbian College.

George Washington Eaton came to the faculty in the fall of 1833, probably through the influence of Bacon who wanted to be relieved of his work in mathematics and natural philosophy in order to teach intellectual and moral philosophy. As professor of Greek and Latin, Eaton had been associated with him at Georgetown College. After Bacon resigned the presidency there, Eaton, despairing of the college’s future, was glad to leave. After his appointment seemed certain, he wrote Mrs. Eaton: “I think…that this of all the places in the world is the place for us. We Can both be happy and useful here…”Thirty-eight years of devoted service bore out his initial response to the life of the Institution and village.*

A native of Pennsylvania, Eaton had grown up in Ohio where he attended Kenyon College and Ohio University at Athens. After a year’s interruption during which he was a private tutor in Virginia and studied briefly at Princeton, he resumed his education at Union College to which President Eliphalet Nott’s fame attracted him. Graduat-

*George W. Eaton to Eliza B. Eaton, Lee, Mass., Nov. 15, 1833.

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Posted in Chapter 4, p. 60, The Expanded Period, 1833-1846

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p. 43 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 43 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

New York, and repeated annually for several years; he had given public lectures on chemistry for some years before at the Hamilton Academy. The students, with faculty permission, but again at their own expense, hired a lecturer in astronomy. This makeshift arrangement lasted only until 1833 when Joel S. Bacon joined the faculty as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. It was several years, however, before the necessary equipment was obtained.

It is impossible to gauge with much accuracy the content and quality of instruction but a comparison of the theological work offered from 1829 to 1833 with that available at Andover and Newton reflects credit on the Hamilton enterprise. It must be remembered that at Hamilton both liberal arts and theological studies had been combined into a four-year course, while the New England seminaries expected their students on entering to have had a college education or its equivalent; and hence they could put more emphasis on theological work. They could set up and maintain these standards because the tradition of a well-educated clergy was, of course, older and stronger in New England than in New York.

A comparison of the non-vocational part of the curriculum with similar work given at Brown and Amherst indicates that most of the subjects taught at those colleges were offered at the Seminary. They must have been handled somewhat superficially at the Institution, however, because of being combined with the theological studies in a four-year course. A fairer comparison can be made in the period after 1833, when the real college course was in operation. The minimum essentials, at least, were available and even those took more time than some students, eager to begin preaching, wanted to spend. One of them, Jabez Swan, Class of 1827, a noted evangelist, recalling his student days, wrote, “The great question with me was to learn God’s method of bringing back a revolted world to himself.”*

The Board of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary had declared in 1822: “The formation of a good LIBRARY is deemed of vital importance to the successful progress of any literary institution, but especially of a Theological Seminary,” a sentiment shared by the officers of the school at Hamilton. Liberal donations of books by friends in Boston, New York, Albany, and Philadelphia formed the nucleus of the collection they solicited with almost as much avidity as

*Frederick Denison, The Evangelist… Rev. Jabez Swan (Waterford, 1873),
64-67.

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