Tag Archives: Middlebury College

p. 57 – The expanded program, 1833-1846

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Chapter IV – THE EXPANDED PROGRAM 1833-1846

The Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution gained recognition as a nursery of religion and learning thanks to the wise planning and heroic labors of its faculty. They became known for scholarly attainments and good teaching as well as for their position and influence in the denomination. By “pressing forward with the ardor of youth to render their course of instruction most efficient,” they achieved a fine reputation for the school throughout the United States. When lack of funds demanded retrenchment in the ’40’s the Board considered replacing, some of the faculty with cheaper and less experienced men. However, such a measure “so threatening to’ the stability and prosperity of the Institution” they prudently tabled in the belief that, “as if is just entering upon the age of manhood, it should not be thrown back … to its former infancy.”*

Seth Spencer Whitman, who had been Professor of Hebrew and Biblical Criticism for six years, left in 1835 and within a few weeks of his departure Thomas Jefferson Conant succeeded him. Member of a prominent Vermont Baptist family, Conant had graduated from Middlebury in 1823 and taught at Columbian, and Waterville (Colby) Colleges. His mastery of the languages of the Old Testament, which he acquired by private study, was to enable him to become one of the leading Biblical scholars and translators ill the country. In 1840 he published a translation from the German of Gesenius’s Hebrew Grammar with the additions of Roediger, which was long the standard text in its field In England arid the’ United States. His wife, a daughter of Jeremiah Chaplin, first president of Colby, was a scholar in her own right. In addition to be bearing and raising ten children she edited a

*Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1842, 8; a843, 9.

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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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p. 35 – Administration, setting and staff, 1820-1833

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in a seminary situated in an area recently frontier and drawing many of its students from simple country homes. Born on a Vermont farm near Bennington in 1782, he began “keeping school” at the age of eighteen, meanwhile reading in preparation for entering Middlebury College to which he was admitted in 1803 as a sophomore. At this new and undeveloped institution, founded only three years previously, he earned all his expenses. He was a member of the Philomathesian Society, a secret literary group, and at his graduation in 1806 participated with five of his classmates in “A Dialogue on the Means of Advancing Human Felicity” and also delivered “An Oration on True Greatness.” His own privations and struggles for an education enabled him to appreciate the hardships of many of his students. He stood before them as an example of what they might achieve through dogged perseverance and hard work.

Slightly under six feet, compact and wiry in build, he had blue eyes, light hair, a fair complexion, and symmetrical features. He impressed his students with his energy, simplicity, and devotion to the Institution. They were drawn to him by his cordiality, lack of affectation, and humility. The stories of his directing men building the Cottage Edifice as he sat at the window of West Hall hearing the recitations of a class, or, once the hour was over, leading his students to the stone quarry or the hay field where he took the lead in the work at hand, help to make clear his hold over them. Hascall was not a great scholar-as were few college teachers of the period were-but he was an independent, logical thinker who could express himself in a fresh and direct style. One friend called him a man “of the Doric order:’ His theology, though strongly Calvinistic, differed from Kendrick’s in that he refused to accept the doctrine of Particular Atonement which Kendrick firmly believed. This difference of opinion failed to cloud their close and affectionate relationship.

Hascall and Kendrick were well paired for conducting the affairs of the Institution. Where one was modest, diffident, and almost distrustful of himself, the other was bold and self-possessed but at the same time neither forward nor presumptuous. Kendrick first began teaching in the fall of 1820 when he came over to Hamilton from Eaton three times a week to give lectures on philosophy and theology. Two years later the Executive Committee elected him Professor of Theology and

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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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