USA > California > A history of the new California, its resources and people; Vol I > Part 27
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59
What now remains was fortunately exempt until 1836 from Mexican control; for though it was in 1828 that the congress passed their act of liber- ating the Indians,-that is of liberating them from Mexican influence, a rather doubtful form of liberation as was subsequently made evident,-it was not until 1836 that the scheme was carried into effect at Santa Clara. As elsewhere the flourishing community of Christian Indians died away, the fields were neglected, and the buildings, exposed to the corroding influences of the weather, had taken on a somewhat tottering aspect. Some time during the period of devastation, William Cullen Bryant passed through Santa Clara and he has given us in his book, "What I Saw in California," a pretty faithful picture of the havoc caused by Mexican rule.
"The rich lands surrounding the Mission of Santa Clara," he writes, "are entirely neglected. I did not notice a foot of ground under cultivation except the garden enclosed, which contained a variety of fruits and plants of the temperate and tropical climate. From want of care these are fast decaying. The picture of decay and ruin presented by this once flourishing establishment, surrounded by a country so fertile and scenery so enchanting is a melancholy spectacle to the passing traveler and speaks a language of loud condemnation against the government."
Such, then, is the history, in brief, of the buildings which in 1851 were converted into Santa Clara College. For several years previous to the actual beginning of education on the coast, attempts had been made to secure some Jesuits from the Rocky Mountains where the sons of Loyola had some very flourishing missions among the native tribes. Accordingly in 1849 Fathers Accolti and Nobili left their missions in Oregon to comply with the request of Father J. M. de F. Gonzalez, who was anxious to have some co-workers in this part of the vineyard. The treaty of 1848 had already confirmed
276
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
American possession of California and so the two Jesuits were but changing their field of labor, not the conditions of living. Reaching San Jose, the then capital of the state, they were given charge of the Pueblo church, where they worked together until in the middle of 1850, Father Accolti, recalled to the northwest, left his companion alone in a strange land, surrounded by the rough and uncouth elements of border life. There was now no hope of establishing a college and, as we would be inclined to judge from our present position, no demand and no possibility of profit.
When there was question, about the same time, some fifty years ago, of establishing a university in Ireland, people were heard to say on all sides (so we are told by Cardinal Newman) "Impossible! How can you give de- grees? What will your degrees be worth? Where are your endowments ? Where are your edifices? Where will you find students? What will the government have to say to you? Who will acknowledge you?" These, and similar questions must have occurred to the solitary Jesuit who in 1851 was commissioned by the Most Rev. Joseph Sadoc Alemany, archbishop of San Francisco, to open a college at Santa Clara. But that he answered them suc- cessfully and to his own satisfaction, we may judge from the fact that, having been commissioned by his superior, he set out for Santa Clara at once and took possession of the old mission buildings. It was on March 19th that the college was declared ready to receive students and that twelve young- sters enrolled their names on the register of California's first institution of learning. Father Nobili began his work with a capital of one hundred and fifty dollars, with two assistant professors, an Indian cook and a woman ser- vant. The four last named were to receive salaries and though one month would almost exhaust the treasury, the pioneer educator went on with his work nothing daunted.
The history of the primitive days is romantic. The college buildings were, as we have seen, in a tumble-down condition; the adobe walls were cracked; the tiles of the roof shattered and loose, so loose in fact, that the rain poured freely into the rooms, making life therein at once miserable and unwholesome. We cannot imagine the difficulties that had to be sur- mounted, but if we had seen the first president of Santa Clara, himself a graduate of the Roman College and a brilliant physicist, mathematician and litterateur, going from class-room to class-room and tlren, when the day's
277
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
work of teaching was over, supervising and taking personal part in the work of reconstruction and general cleaning, we would readily admit that the college was in truth begun under difficult circumstances. Under Father No- bili's direction the roofs were patched, the walls strengthened and the entire cloister given a general living aspect after the slumber of fifteen years.
Such devotedness could not but win esteem for the man and respect for an institution which in all other regards was extremely despicable. As a matter of fact it did attract the attention of the then inhabitants of Cali- fornia, so that at the close of the first scholastic year, the college register con- tained as many as forty-five names.
It will be of historic interest to give these names here inasmuch as some of the families represented and the young men themselves are well known in the pioneer and subsequent history of the state.
Resident Students.
Non-Resident Students.
Martin Murphy,
John Burnett,
Manuel Varela,
Charles H. Forbes,
Henry A. Cobb,
Miguel Forbes,
Bernard Murphy,
James Forbes,
Emilio Carpenas,
Joaquin Arques,
Andres Martinez,
Alpheus Bascom,
John Hulton,
Joaquin Hernandez,
Enrique Davini,
Dolores Miranda,
James Fuller,
William Menton,
Israel Levy,
John Hulbert,
Lemuel Jones,
Armstead Burnett,
Patrick Murphy,
James Alexander Forbes,
Adolphe Servatius,
Frederick Forbes,
Frank W. Grimes,
Luis Forbes,
John Thomas Colahan,
Dolores Sunol,
Edward Hulton,
Andronico Dye,
William Brown,
Hugh Menton,
Andrew Roland,
Carl Wampach,
Nathan Levy,
Jose Pinero.
Thomas White,
Edward Johnson.
With such a goodly number the first year of Santa Clara came to a close contrary to the adverse predictions of some few wiseacres. It was some time in February that the perpetuity of the good work was feared for.
Charles Martin,
Jose Maria Miramontes,
Edmund Munfrey,
Ignacio Alviso
278
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
Whether doubts were expressed by letter or in a printed article we have not been able to ascertain ; all we know is that the first president wrote to the edi- tors of the Picayune reassuring them of the solid basis on which his institu- tion rested. "We do not claim for it," he writes, "even the name of a col- lege, but have looked upon it merely as a select boarding and day school; the germ only of such an institution as we would wish to make it and as the wants of the community will require. We have issued no regular pros- pectus nor did we intend doing so until we should be able to enlarge and fit up the establishment so as to put it on an equal footing with the other colleges of the order. With us the good of our pupils, not their money, is
a primary object. We have at present fourteen boarders and
fifteen days scholars. The rule of prepayment was not rigidly enforced in the past year during which time it is well known that our cur- rent expenses far exceeded the income derived from our pupils. You need have no fear as to the college's permanency. Had pecuniary profit been our object in its establishment, it would have run its course and ceased to exist many months ago. We commenced and carried it out at a great sacrifice. No effort on our part shall be spared to conduct it in such a manner as to justify the hopes of our friends and merit the confidence of the public."
This letter, besides showing the broad principles on which Santa Clara College was built, manifests a nobility of character which the historian can- not well pass over in silence. The name of the Rev. John Nobili is one of which California may well feel proud. True he was a Jesuit, and a Catholic priest, but so were Marquette and Joliet. We have other famous names in- timately connected with California's history; but we have not so many that we can afford to forget our pioneer educator. John Nobili was born in Rome, April 8, 1812; he entered the Roman College at the age of thirteen, whence he was graduated with honors some seven years later. While still a young man he published in his native Italian language several works on physics and mathematics and later, at his own request, was sent by his superiors to labor among the Indians of Montana and Oregon. In 1849, as we have stated above, he came to California and founded Santa Clara College of which until his death in 1856 he was the actual president. Zeal for souls was Father Nobili's characteristic trait. In the class-room, on sick-calls, in supervising his own improvements he always had some motive of zeal to
279
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
animate him, some high principle to guide him. Unsparing of self, though of delicate health, he was as gentle as a lamb to those with whom he had to deal. The students recognized this, and while dreading him as their master they revered and loved him as a father.
Such was the man who founded Santa Clara College and who alone amid innumerable difficulties guided it safely through its first six months of existence, attending all the while to the work of two parishes, San Jose and Santa Clara, teaching three, sometimes four hours a day, straightening out the complicated legal title of the mission property and sleeping in the students' dormitory by night. But he was not destined to continue the work alone for any great length of time. Early in February, 1852, and almost unexpectedly, there arrived from Oregon three fellow-Jesuits, Fathers de Vos, Goetz and Veyret. Like Father Nobili these men had left their native land for missionary work and like him they were ready for whatever hardships that work entailed. The four labored together like pioneer champions, as they were, and succeeded in putting the newly established college on a solid footing, so solid, in fact, that Father Accolti, who visited Santa Clara toward the close of 1852, was able to give his impressions of the institution in very glowing terms. "Although this college was in those times" (he is referring to the date of his 'visit), "in a state of rudimentary formation, still all that could be desired was taught; English, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Physics, Surveying, Music, etc. And the pupils profited so well that their public examinations and exhibitions amazed those who were present, and our new college of Santa Clara has so increased in reputation that the best families, even Protestant, have no objection to send their chil- dren to it."
In view of this reputation the student body continued to increase and in 1855 the state legislature endowed the institution with the charter of a university, giving power of conferring academic degrees. This privilege increased the number of pupils and before the year was well begun there were as many as one hundred and eleven on the college register. Fortu- nately the teaching staff had been increased by the timely arrival of sixteen young Jesuit professors. These new arrivals were for the most part Italian exiles who, driven from their native land before the social and political storms of 1848, sought refuge in America and having studied English in
280
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
eastern colleges of the Jesuit order, came westward to devote their life and energies to the work of instructing the young generation of California. It is well that this fact be borne in mind, for as we advance in this narrative we shall find that nearly all the men to whom Santa Clara owes its progress, are of Italian birth and education.
In 1855, then, the school year opened with twenty teachers and one hundred and eleven pupils, and up to this time there were no additional build- ings! How could so many pupils and professors be accommodated? This is a question to which the historian has sought an answer but without any satisfactory results. They were not accommodated at all, seems to express the real state of affairs. They were pioneers and the life of a pioneer has its inconveniences and romance; it has, and needs must have, its incommodi- ties. Any one who understands the nature of a mission quadrangle will readily anticipate the inconveniences necessarily connected with the first years of Santa Clara. A long one-story quadrilateral with a church on one side, a wall opposite and on the two remaining sides rooms facing into the inner garden formed the primitive college. These rooms were divided as best they might into four dormitories, a kitchen, a dining-room, a study hall and private rooms for the fathers and secular professors. Two of the Jesuits, Fathers Masnata and Messea, were not so blessed as to have a private room and were wont to sleep on the benches of the study hall, or even, when the weather permitted it, on the porticos beneath the stars. They did not suffer from the hardship, however, for they both lived to be octogenarians, Father Masnata, indeed, dying at the age of eighty-two, and Father Messea reach- ing his eighty-sixth year. But for class-rooms, play-rooms, and the thousand other conveniences of a modern college? We can do no better than run through the day's horarium to give an answer to these questions and an idea of those primitive times.
A little hand bell is sounded at 6 a. m. and the students aroused from healthful slumbers roll out for the day's work, though some have already been up since five, studying by candle light. [NOTE .- The writer has been informed by an old pioneer father, that D. M. Delmas, now one of Cali- fornia's first orators, made it a constant practice to arise at five, and with the aid of his candle prepare his daily lessons.] Their time is limited, and in less than fifteen minutes a crowd of youngsters with dishevelled hair is
281
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
seen trooping to a water-fount in the center of the inner garden. Morning ablutions finished in this crude fashion, the bell announces the hour for church services, and one and all they betake themselves to the old Mission Church for mass and rosary. Breakfast is served by Philip, an old Indian cook, whose culinary experiences are not very extensive. He does his best, however, and the students, as much imbued with the pioneer spirit as the Fathers, are satisfied with their humble fare, and after a short recreation they prepare themselves for class. Class,-where is it held? If the weather permits, professor and students find out some quiet corner of the garden and begin the work of the day; otherwise the pupils are called into the private rooms and listen to the lecturer who has converted his bed into a desk. Thus the day passes ; recreation, class, regular meals, and now that darkness has set in all are gathered in a bare hall, huddled together almost, at a common desk, each supplied with a candle, each intent upon his next day's tasks. At nine they retire to sleep the sleep of satisfaction.
Such was the actual program until the end of the school year '54-'55. The next year saw many additions, both in building and educational ap- pointments. The principal addition in the line of building consisted in the purchase of the "California Hotel." The Fathers were jubilant over the successful purchase of this secular edifice that had been built almost in the very shadow of the mission sanctuary. In the college catalogue of 1855, they announce the purchase thus: "In the course of last year a large structure, containing eight spacious classrooms and a well ventilated dor- mitory, one hundred and ten feet long and forty feet wide, was added to the college buildings."
Together with this material expansion, humble though it was, there was a marked growth in another and more important direction. A library of some ten thousand volumes, the largest in the state at the time, had been added to the college. The books were principally of educational value; a complete set of the ancient classics, a respectable collection of English literary works, several scientific treatises and reference books in abundance. To- gether with the library a physical cabinet had been fitted out "with apparatus comprising all recent improvements," which were brought all the way from Paris. Nor was the moral element neglected. A chapel begun in 1854 was
282
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
rapidly approaching completion, though owing to the death of Father Nobili. it was not finished until 1856.
The Rev. Nicholas Congiato succeeded Father Nobili, and an able suc- cessor he was in all truth. The life of this second president reads like a novel. He was a man of extensive and exceptional experience; he had been vice president of the Jesuit College of Nobles, Sardinia, and of the College of Freiburg, Switzerland, and was imprisoned by the Italian revolutionists of '47 for his profession of Jesuit vows. Released the same year, he came to America and crossed the plains for the Indian missions in Oregon in 1848. Later, having been ordered by superiors to Bardstown, Kentucky, he re- traced his steps alone and unacquainted with the country, and after some six months reached his destination, where he was, to his chagrin, for he preferred missionary life, given charge of St. Joseph's College. Soon after- ward he obtained permission to return to the west and again crossed the prairies to act as Superior General of both the Californian and the Oregon Jesuits. It was even while fulfilling this difficult office that he was chosen to succeed Father Nobili as president of Santa Clara College. The work and responsibility of such an appointment would have been too much for an ordinary man; but the Rev. Nicholas Congiato was not an ordinary man. Even at the advanced age of eighty, when in retirement at the Sacred Heart Novitiate, Los Gatos, he was loath to be idle, and till within a few months of his death he utilized his time by teaching his younger brethren in religion. His funeral, which occurred in May, 1897, was a memorable event in Santa Clara Valley. All the old pioneer settlers and hundreds of the younger gen- eration turned out to pay their last tribute of respect to one who had spent so long a life for the betterment of his fellow-men.
We have seen how the College had advanced during the first years of its existence, further developments under the circumstances seemed impos- sible, but with energetic activity Father Congiato kept up the progressive spirit. It was during his incumbency that the Literary Congress was in- augurated. This Congress is a debating society unique in the annals of education in America. Originated at Santa Clara it has since been intro- duced into several eastern colleges and universities. Composed of two co- ordinate branches, the Philalethic Senate and the House of Philhistorians, it is in form and method of procedure modeled after the Congress at Wash-
283
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
ington, the president of the College filling ex-officio the place of the execu- tive. That this system has worked successfully is evidenced from the fact that the most of Santa Clara's prominent alumni, of whom we shall have occasion to speak later, began their career as orators in the Philalethic Assem- bly Hall. Other events marked the presidency of Father Congiato, short though it was, of which the mere mention is sufficient. He instituted a system of public examination for such as sought academic honors (Note: At one of these examinations Thomas Bergin, whose subsequent success in the law has made him famous, presented himself before the public and the board of examiners, "Prepared on twenty-four books of the Iliad") ; he brought Father Nobili's Chapel to a finish; he erected an Auditorium on the campus, crude indeed and humble, but rendered famous by the names of Clay M. Greene, John T. Malone, and Carolton, who won their first dramatic honors in that same humble theatre.
While Father Congiato was thus working to make the college a fit home for education, he had other serious duties to attend to, for, as we have seen, he was Superior General of the whole Jesuit community in the west. Stress of business, therefore, and failing health compelled him to give the charge of the college into the hands of the Rev. Felix Cicaterri. The new president was, like his predecessor, an exile of Italy. Born in Venice in 1804, he received a liberal education in his native city, entered the Society of Jesus in the twenties, taught literature, Italian and Classical, for four- teen years, and in 1848 was elected president of the Jesuit college at Vienna. He had hardly begun his work, however, when the storm of persecution against the Jesuits broke violently throughout the Peninsula and forced him to seek refuge in other lands. For several years prior to his arrival in California he taught at St. John's College, Fordham, and at Georgetown University. He was chosen president of Santa Clara a year after his arrival.
The completion of the Physical Cabinet was the chief feature of Cica- terri's presidency. Science in the fifties was not what it is now; scientific apparatus were not easily obtained, but with European ideas of what a college ought to be, the early Fathers sent to Paris for all the articles neces- sary to complete their cabinet. We read in the college catalogue of 1856-57 the proud announcement that "A complete Philosophical and Chemical apparatus from the best manufacturers in Paris, which cost the institution
284
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
nearly ten thousand dollars, and a large collection of specimens of minerals imported from Paris" had been added to the already well furnished labora- tories. The apparatus contained twenty-eight instruments for experiments in mechanics, twenty-five for hydraulics, fifty-two pneumatics, sixty for heat, fifty for electricity, fifty-nine for experiments in galvanism and mag- netism, sixty-nine for optics, and a complete Daguerreotyping apparatus. It was indeed a complete apparatus for the time and it is doubtful whether any other institution in the country could have boasted of a better supply.
The expense thus incurred is a sufficient explanation of the comparative standstill in the building direction. Already California was making rapid strides toward the wealth and influence which has since characterized this western state; but Santa Clara was developing along other lines. The regents having to choose between the essentials of education and merely subsidiary improvements, chose the former. They might have put whatever little money they had into buildings and accommodations; they might have attended to outward appearances before giving their establishment inner worth; but accustomed as all the regents and professors were to solid mental training, they were lavish in procuring the more important articles before attempting what, though good in itself and even necessary now, had from an educational standpoint no value other than show and éclat. And so they continued, these early Fathers, procuring books and scientific necessaries and competent professors, with no other hope, no other reward than that of helping their students to increase in wisdom and grace before God and man. Indeed, no marked advance was made in building, until the arrival of the Rev. Burchard Villiger in 1861. Father Villiger tells us in his own words the nature of the improvements which he made:
"Perceiving," he writes in an autobiographical sketch, "that arrange- ments were making for the Southern Pacific Railroad to pass through the town I said to the Fathers : 'We shall never be able to get out of debt unless we first run deeper into debt and give the College a decent external appear- ance.' All agreed unanimously. Plans and bargains were made; a great number of mechanics and laborers were employed to begin and finish the work in the least possible time. And so it was done to the astonishment of the town and the surprise of the travelers of California. * * First we * raised a front building 200 feet in length and over 40 feet in width, three
285
HISTORY OF THE NEW CALIFORNIA.
stories high, with a center portion of four stories. Then the front of the old church was renovated with a fine portal and two tasteful towers and a large public ornamental square was laid out in front of the church. Next came an elevation of the western wing 240 feet in length with rectangular return toward the church of 100 feet. Finally we reared a separate build- ing as a precaution against conflagration. This building has a front to- ward the town in the west, 100 feet in length, with two rectangular wings decorated with verandas and stairways for each of the three stories. The center is surrounded by an elegant belfry 100 feet in height."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.