Tag Archives: Jonathan Wade

p. 54 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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of Inquiry, each maintained an existence independent of it. In addition to these groups there grew up on the campus the ephemeral Gamma Phi and Lyceum Societies and the relatively permanent Musical Society; little is known of the first two; the third, which existed as early as 1832, fostered vocal music and sang at commencements.

Commencement week included not only the graduation ceremony but also oral public examinations of the various classes. Immediately following the examinations came the “exercises” or “exhibitions” at which juniors and seniors delivered orations. The part of the program given over to the seniors, however, was technically the commencement. The week’s activities gave the officers an opportunity to show something of the work of the Institution and at the same time provided students who were graduating a chance to make useful contacts with denomi­national leaders who might attend. Even though no class had completed the course in June 1821, “public exercises” were held so that friends of the school could see and hear its students at the end of the first year’s work. The program consisted of fifteen orations, all on religious subjects, including one in Latin and one in Greek.

Arrangements for the commencement of 1822 set precedents which were followed rather generally until students were to be graduated from the collegiate department in the middle 1830’s. The newspapers of the vicinity were notified of the week’s program, a public dinner planned, parchment diplomas printed, a procession provided for, and Jonathan Olmstead appointed marshall. Probably this commencement and all those before 1827 were held in the Baptist meeting house. Concluding the 1822 program was an “Address to the Class-By the Professor,” identified as Kendrick since he usually delivered a kind of baccalaureate sermon to subsequent graduating classes. Alumni remembered long afterward the sound advice and fatherly admonition packed into them. Nor did they forget tearful farewells as they went their separate ways once the ceremony was over.

Of the 110 men who had finished the course in the Seminary by June 1833 nearly all had entered the ministry. Nine became foreign missionaries and probably most of the others at some time in their careers preached in the sparsely settled parts of the United States. In any survey of these alumni Jonathan Wade stands out. His fame as a missionary rested not only on his preaching but on his scholarly efforts. He reduced several Burmese dialects to written languages, wrote

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p. 53 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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topic and presented its report at the monthly meeting. Topics ranged from the Burmese missions, Siam, and India to American slavery and the “moral condition” of France. The extensive missionary correspondence of the society and its library supplied a large amount of data for the reports.

The Society for Inquiry, though not ostensibly founded through the influence of the famous Andover society of the same name, which had helped to establish similar groups in American colleges,” nevertheless maintained an active correspondence with these groups. Alike in aims, organization, and procedures, they represent an important phase of the widespread and fervent missionary spirit of the age.

Aside from Wade and Kincaid, only one student had avowed his intention of “preaching the gospel to the heathen” despite the campus interest in missions, In October 1831, however, five disclosed to each other that they too wanted to go to the foreign fields. William Dean, Class of 1833, destined to a great career in China, had opened his heart to his roommate, Grover S. Comstock, also of the Class of 1833, and discovered that he likewise contemplated a similar step. When they found three other students who shared their conviction, they invited them to their room in the northwest corner of the second story of West Hall where each “was requested to relate his exercises.” A week later they organized themselves into the Eastern Association and invited” any person desiring to engage in foreign missionary labors” to join, provided all the members approved.

The purpose of the organization was not only to discuss questions of common interest, but also to steel the members against the influences of their families and friends who might try to keep them from carrying out their intentions of becoming foreign missionaries. At their meetings they uncovered their deeply stirred emotions on “laboring for God in foreign lands.” When Wade returned” to the campus in 1833 to appeal for men to go to Burma, four members of the Eastern’ Association responded. They were, in addition to Dean and Comstock, Hosea Howard, also Class of 1833, and Samuel S. Day, Class of 1836. After nine months spent studying Burmese and Karen under his and Mrs. Wade’s direction, they sailed with him from Boston for the Far East.

Students who planned to preach in the Mississippi Valley also formed an organization known as the Western Association. Though both the Eastern and Western Associations germinated in the Society

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Missionary Society forms (p. 52)

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out that all of them had returned to orthodoxy to the great rejoicing of the whole community. This episode would seem to indicate skill in stimulating searching examination of theological beliefs.

The rise and development of student societies follow the pattern for such extracurricular activities at other American colleges and seminaries in organization, interests, and program. The first was the Philomathesian, founded in August, 1821, probably with the particular approval of Hascall who had belonged to a group somewhat like this one during his college days at Middlebury. Its interests were literary and theological and its objectives included training in public speaking, maintenance of a library, correspondence with missionaries and with similar organizations on other campuses, and an “inquiry into the most eligible fields of ministerial labor.” Designated members delivered sermons at weekly meetings which the audience and a student critic commented upon. The secretaries conducted an active correspondence with missionaries and the societies at Amherst, Williams, Hamilton, Andover, and other institutions. The library of over fifty volumes consisted chiefly of gifts and included not only religious books and periodicals but also many secular items and newspapers. The secretaries occasionally solicited subscriptions from editors in return for communications. The library served as a useful supplement to the Seminary’s meager collection of books and its remnants, distinguished by the society’s bookplate, may be located today on the University Library’s shelves.

The consecration of Wade and Kincaid, “first fruits of the Institution,” to missionary service in Burma gave a strong impetus to student interest in missions which resulted in the formation of the Missionary Society in 1824. It resembled the Philomathesian Society, which it absorbed seven years later, though its primary concern was missionary work. Besides seeking “the religious improvement of its members” and raising funds for missions it sought “information relative to the climate, productions, civil government, &c of the various nations of the earth “… [and also a] detailed account of their present moral condition and of the obstacles or the successes with which the introduction of the gospel in probability would be met.” In 1832 the organization changed its name to Society for Inquiry though its purpose remained, in general, the same. The members were divided into, nine groups in accordance with the months of the academic year. Each group investigated a

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First student Jonathan Wade (p. 45)

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early 19th century were lacking at this Seminary. The prevailing theological tone which emphasized the serious side of life, the poverty of most of the students, and the fact that their average age was about 25, discouraged frivolity and student pranks. Also, the rather delicate public relations between the Institution and its Baptist patrons would not permit kinds of student behavior which would in any way injure the school’s reputation. In earnestness and sobriety, the Hamilton students resembled those at Andover rather than the carefree youths of Brown and Amherst. They were so impressed with the heavy responsibilities of being ministers that many went to groves and woods for prayer and contemplation. The Executive Committee was quick to note:

 

the spirit of industry and zeal for the knowledge and glory of God, and also unanimity, which has been a source of gratification, and a pledge of their future usefulness in the kingdom of God’s grace.*

One graduate wrote of his student days in the early 30’s:

If it be thought there was not in the earliest days as broad and critical culture as in later times, there was a depth of the philosophy of life, an earnestness and self-denial, a courage and faith, a force in execution, a strenuous persistence in the face of difficulties, a philological, critical and prayerful study of the Divine Word, and a clear penetration into the Divine Will, that makes those times as the age of romance.**

Though college boys of today would consider such an environment morbid and gloomy, their predecessors on the Hill, as the campus was affectionately called, found the air filled with inspiration and joy.

From 10 in 1820 the enrollment of the Institution grew to 124 in 1833. The increase had been steady until the revivals of 1831-2 encouraged young men to enter the ministry and hence sent up the number of admissions considerably. Of the 258 students who had entered from 1818 to 1833, nearly two-thirds, 160, came from New York State. Vermont contributed the next largest number, 25; then came Connecticut with 24 and Massachusetts with 11. States with less than 10 were Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Georgia, and New Jersey. England and Wales sent 3; Nova Scotia, 3; Ontario, 4.

Jonathan Wade, the first student, came from Hartford, Washington County, New York, in February, 1818, less than six months after the

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1822, 5.

**[Colgate University], Class of 1836 Fiftieth Anniversary (Utica 1886), 15.

 

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Ebenezer Wakeley introduces a bill for incorporation (p. 12)

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The Baptist Education Society’s first year proved more prosperous than its founders had expected. Its agents had raised over $2,400 in donations and $55.00 in subscriptions. Already one student, Jonathan Wade, of Hartford, New York, had been received as a beneficiary and was studying Latin with Daniel Hascall. The sum of $27.12 for his board for fifteen and a half weeks at $1.75 per week was the chief expenditure. So sanguine were the members that they directed the Trustees to apply to the state legislature for a charter for the organization. A committee was also appointed to select a site for the new institution.

News of the founding of the Education Society had spread to New England, New York, and Philadelphia. William Staughton, Luther Rice, and the Board of the Triennial Convention, believing that the interests of the denomination could best be served by a concentration of effort, hoped that the Society would become an auxiliary organization of the Convention and send men and funds to its institution in Philadelphia; But no step was taken in this direction. Hascall, Kendrick and the others had clearly indicated in the Constitution that the Society was to have its own institution and one of the arguments urged for supporting it was that the school would be located in up-state New York.

As directed by the Society, the Trustees petitioned the legislature for a charter. Ebenezer Wakeley, a member who, was in the Assembly, in January 1819 introduced a bill for incorporation and headed the select committee to which it was referred. He later learned that General Erastus Root, a fellow assemblyman of great influence with the majority party, opposed the bill on the ground that it would charter a religious society. An extremely able man, scholarly, sarcastic, dissipated, and sometimes uncouth and rough, Root could be a dreaded antagonist. When Wakeley called on him one evening in an attempt to explain the purpose of the Society and win him over he exclaimed, “What the devil do you want with an act of incorporation?” and swore that the bill should be defeated. The next morning as the Assembly went into the committee of the whole the Speaker called on Root to preside. Wakeley feared that the General would ask to be excused so that he could participate in the discussion, but after a moment’s hesitation he took the chair and thus eliminated himself as an opponent on the floor. As Wakeley presented the reasons for the bill, Root would frequently scowl at him. On its third reading it passed with 62

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