Tag Archives: Library

p. 273 – The Bryan Period, 1908-1922

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dent to enable it to give greater attention to teacher training courses.

The Seminary failed to keep pace with the College in growth or performance. A major reason seems to have been the practice of admitting many poorly prepared students, several of whom enrolled in the abbreviated English course as an easy academic short cut to the ministry. In 1918 provision was made for such students by establishing a four-year course for non-college graduates to be taught by both Seminary and College faculties which would lead to the Bachelor of Theology degree. Further accommodation came in 1919 when the requirements for the Bachelor of Divinity degree, hitherto totaling seven years of college and theological work, were reduced to six and non-college men were admitted to the program.

Changes in the Seminary included the resignation of Dr. Sylvester Burnham as Dean in 1910 and the appointment of William H. Allison, A.B., Harvard, ’93, and a Chicago Ph.D., as his successor and Professor of Ecclesiastical History. Dr. Allison was followed in 1915 by John F. Vichert, a former student at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, and Chicago, who taught Theology. Dr. Hinton S. Lloyd, for thirty-eight years Corresponding Secretary of the Baptist Education Society and, in effect, its chief officer, resigned in 1915 to be succeeded by Dean Vichert. Frank A. Starratt, A.B., Acadia, ’92, was Professor of Theology from 1909 to 1919 and Dr. William M. Lawrence, ’70, former President of the University Board of Trustees, in 1912 became Lecturer in Christian Ethics.

Though the Library did not play as vital a part in the educational process as later, this resource of the University nearly doubled its holdings in the Bryan period, growing from about 50,000 volumes to more than 90,000. Dr. David F. Estes, who had retired from the Seminary in 1920 as Professor of New Testament, retired as Librarian the next year. His successor was Charles W. Spencer, the former Professor of History who had resigned in 1905 and now returned after teaching at Princeton and the University of Nevada and receiving his  Ph.D. from Columbia. He was the first full-time University Librarian.  Perhaps best known on the staff were Miss Alice A. Guller, Circulation  Librarian, who came in 1914 and Miss Lida C. Vasbinder, Reference  Librarian, who came a year later; both will be remembered for their  generous assistance to generations of students and faculty.

` After several years of decline Colgate Academy closed its doors in

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Posted in Chapter 13, p. 273, The Bryan Period 1908-1922

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p. 197 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 197 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

Prof. Alexander M. Beebee Jr., '47, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p197Prof. William H. Maynard, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p197

 

 

Interest in the University Library developed slowly in the Dodge period. In addition to teaching and being Dean, Professor Andrews served as Librarian from 1868 to 1880 and Professor Burnham from 1880 to 1892. The book collection was kept in a single room on the second floor of Alumni Hall. It numbered about 7,500 volumes in 1869, and 18,500 twenty years later. The establishment in the 1870’s of an endowment fund of $25,000, the income of which was for book purchases, brought about a steady increase on the shelves. James B. Colgate occasionally made gifts of luxurious art books and special sets. Dr. Dodge, who was something of a bibliophile, presented his library of some 3,500 volumes which was especially rich in art and theology. He had never spared expense in acquiring his treasures, many of which he valued for their fine colorful bindings as well as their contents. Despite his counsel to students to read the best English novels, the Library was seriously deficient in English and American literature. Few students, however, seem to have had a taste for leisure-time reading, nor did the fact that the Library was open only three hours a day and lacked an adequate catalog encourage them to acquire one. The opening of the James B. Colgate Library in 1891 was to create new opportunities for reading and study.

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Emily Taylor and co-education (p. 159)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on Emily Taylor and co-education (p. 159)

methods the library seems to have been quite generally neglected. Its collections, which numbered 8,000 volumes in 1850, had grown to only 9,821 by 1869. One student remembered it as consisting chiefly of German editions of Greek and Hebrew classics “which gave forth an unspeakable antique odor.” Modern literature was to be found in the libraries of the literary societies which, with that of the Society for Inquiry, boasted over 3,000 volumes in 1858.

The practice of awarding prizes to stimulate students’ intellectual ambitions was not instituted until 1867 when James J. Lewis, not yet a member of the faculty, donated a fund in memory of his brother, Captain George W. M. Lewis of Utica, the income to be given on an annual competitive basis to the senior who delivered the best original oration. President Dodge, perhaps influenced by the system of awards Wayland had introduced at Brown, founded prizes for the best prepared entrants to the freshman class. George B. Lasher, Class of 1857, also established prizes for Juniors who excelled in English composition. These awards have all been maintained to the present.

Student enrollment statistics furnish a good indication of the University’s prosperity. Starting with an attendance in all departments of 33 in the fall of 1850, the number reached 90 by August 1851. During the Taylor administration it increased to a high of 228 in 1855 and thereafter declined to a low of 117 in 1864. By 1869 the figure had climbed back to 162. Registration dropped off seriously in the College and Grammar School during the Civil War years, as might be expected, the low for the College being 56 in 1865 and 20 for the Grammar School in 1864. The average number of students per year in all departments for the period from 1850 to 1869 was 164.

Admission requirements for each of the three departments remained much the same as drawn up in the 1830’s. The Catalogues from 1869 on, however, called attention to the fact that “Students from all denominations of Christians are admitted to the Seminary.” But there is no reason to believe that any considerable number of non-Baptists sought to enter its doors. The only instance of “co-education” to be found is the presence of Emily Taylor, daughter of the President, in her father’s class in intellectual and moral philosophy.

The faculty were sanguine over the first post-Removal student body, probably because they were pleased at having any to teach, and for a

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Posted in Chapter 8, p. 159, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869, timeline

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p. 76 – The expanded program, 1833-1846

Posted on May 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 76 – The expanded program, 1833-1846

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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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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p. 21 – Administration, Setting, and Staff, 1820-1833

Posted on March 28, 2012 by | Leave a comment

became the policy of the Society its resources were opened up for the Institution and Clark Kendrick was made its chief agent in Vermont. His efforts in collecting funds and selecting students made his death in 1824 a severe blow to the struggling Board and Executive Committee. Assistance from the Baptists of the Green Mountain State continued until 1830 when they formed themselves into a branch of the Northern Baptist Education Society (originally the Massachusetts Baptist Education Society) because many of their young men were under its patronage. What interest in education remained was diverted into founding denominational academies within the state.

The Baptists of Connecticut, too, participated in the movement to provide an educated ministry and in 1818 founded an education society. Noting the possibilities of tapping resources in this quarter as they had done in Vermont, the New York society sent Joel W. Clark and Jonathan Olmstead to Connecticut in 1822. They bore a diplomatic letter of introduction and were authorized to broach the question of a union of forces behind the Hamilton institution. A few months later the Connecticut society by a unanimous vote agreed to cooperate. The relationship lasted until 1827 or 1828 when “with friendly dispositions and from local considerations of convenience” the Connecticut society decided to send no more students or funds to Hamilton. Henceforth their energies were devoted to establishing their own academy and assisting the Northern Baptist Education Society.

Since the Executive Committee had come to believe by 1831 that New York State alone was large and prosperous enough to maintain the Seminary, they agreed not to interfere with the plan of the Northern Baptist Education Society to extend her auxiliaries in New England. The support which the Institution had found among Baptists of the Empire State, especially those of New York City, made it possible for the Committee to come to this decision.

The earliest contact between officers of the Institution and metropolitan Baptists seems to have been in 1820 when Joel W. Clark and Elon Galusha went to New York to solicit books for the library. Their visit prepared the ground for discussing the possibility of consolidating the New York Baptist .Theological Seminary, which was not proving a success, with the school at Hamilton. After their return to Hamilton, Kendrick took up the question in a letter to the Board of the New York Institution. He pointed out the superior benefits of a seminary in the

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 21

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