Tag Archives: The Reverend Elon Galusha

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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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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First issue of New York Baptist Register (p. 19)

Posted on March 28, 2012 by | Leave a comment

and his brother editors announced their support of the Institution, a policy which their successor, Alexander M. Beebee, steadily maintained for thirty years after he took over the paper in 1825. Since the periodical was widely read, its continued assistance was a valuable asset.

The Register prepared the churches for visits from agents of the Society who collected contributions and testified to the genuine piety and purpose of the Seminary. The Executive Committee had stated in 1820:

There remains no doubt but a liberal patronage will be afforded this Institution, from the flourishing region of the country bounded east by the Green Mountains, west by the Niagara River, north by Lake Ontario and the river St. Lawrence, including, perhaps, some portion of Pennsylvania on the south. Within these limits are nearly five hundred Baptist churches; about three hundred of which are in the state of New York, west of the Hudson River. But a small number of these churches have been visited, or even become acquainted with this Society.*

The contacts the agents made not only produced a large part of the annual income but also won over many Baptists hostile to the training of ministers. When the needs of the Seminary required special exertions, and that was fairly regularly, the Trustees appointed full-time paid agents. Among the most successful were Joel W. Clark and Elon Galusha. Occasionally, friends of the Institution were induced to make collections in their own areas and often Kendrick, Hascall, or other faculty members “accepted an agency.”

The agents received donations of goods as well as money; and in their reports are found listed such items as cloth, articles of clothing for students, chairs, a saddle, a thermometer, a bed, and stoves. Some could be used and others sold. Contributions of food, such as an 18-pound cheese, a bushel and a half of dried apples or 565 pounds of pork, valued at $33.90, could be added to the larder of the boarding house or sold to merchants. The Reverend Spencer H. Cone, prominent Baptist preacher of New York City, sent 42 copies of his edition of Jones’ Church History to be sold for $219.50; he agreed to give a quarter of that amount to the Institution. General Abner Forbes, member of the Vermont legislature, donated 60 merino sheep including “one good size full blooded Merino buck.” The wealthy Peterboro

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1820, p. 6.

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p. 18 – Administration, Setting, And Staff, 1820-1833

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In addition to Kendrick, Clark, Olmstead, and Daniel Hascall, the personnel of the Committee included Elon Galusha, John Peck, and Seneca B. Burchard. Galusha, son of Jonas Galusha, a former governor of Vermont, was making a reputation at Whitesboro as one of the most eloquent Baptist preachers in the State. He was later to figure prominently in the antislavery controversy which would split the denomination in the ‘forties. “Father Peck,” the greatly loved and benign pastor of the Cazenovia church, subsequently became well known as a far-ranging agent for home and foreign missions. Burchard, one of the most important of the stalwart laymen intimately associated with the Institution, left a record of service matching that of Olmstead. A newly appointed faculty member in a confidential letter described Burchard and Olmstead as “two very grave and sober and considerate and economical Deacons. They are shrewd and judicious men, however, and are perhaps the fairest representation of the whole Bap. Community with whom we have to do.”*

The high point in the year was the Society’s Annual Meeting,usually held, the first week in June. The date was fitted into the schedule of “public examinations” of the students and the “public exercises” of the juniors and seniors. At this time the officers of the Society brought together all those interested in the Institution. The procedure on these occasions resembled that of the meetings of Baptist associations with which Kendrick and his associates were familiar. A sermon by a well-known preacher selected long in advance opened the program and no doubt attracted a crowd of rapt listeners who, it was hoped, would stay through the remainder and really more important part of the meeting. From the various reports then submitted they learned of the year’s achievements and the problems and hopes for the future. The last item of business was the election of Trustees, who in turn immediately chose their officers.

With the exception of the first two, all meetings convened in Hamilton, probably at the Baptist meeting house until the Society had halls of sufficient size in its own buildings. The Reports of the occasions, which were prepared almost entirely by Kendrick, constitute one of the most enlightening sources for the history of the Institution. Announcements and news about the Seminary also appeared in the New York Baptist Register, the State organ of the denomination published at Utica. In the first issue, February 20, 1824, Elon Galusha

* Joel S. Bacon to George W. Eaton, Georgetown, Ky., Aug. 28, 1833.

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Posted in Administration Setting and Staff 1820-1833, Chapter 2, p. 18

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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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Posted in Chapter 1, Origin, p. 14, timeline

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