USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 4
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"An Aet for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School" was the title of the bill which they presented to the legislature upon its assembling at New Haven on October 16. 1701. It was the document which clinched the action of a some- what imperfectly authenticated meeting held earlier at the house of James Pierpont's classmate and associate in this enterprise, the Reverend Samuel Russel of Branford. The meeting was about the first of October, and the action consisted, we may assume, in the formal giving of some books for the forming of a college. There is much haziness and some disagreement as to this foundation, but in general we may as well allow Branford's claim to have been the place of the actual founding of the college. It was a foundation by the New Ilaven party and in the interest of New Haven.
The matter succeeded with the legislature, the Hartford group not seeing fit to make any decided opposition. The act made no referenee to a site, and the opponents of New Haven would seem justified in deciding that it was still anybody's college, as indeed it proved to be. The trustees, numbering ten, who were to attempt to decide that matter, were Noyes of Stonington, Chauncy of Stratford, Buckingham of Saybrook, Pierson of Killingworth, Mather of Windsor. Andrew of Milford, Woodbridge of Hartford. Pierpont of New Haven, Russell of Middletown, and Webb of Fairfield. It may be seen from the list that the majority evidently was against Hartford, but there was nothing
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to do about it. It ought to be said in passing that James Pierpont, if he played any politics in the making of the list, had at the start omitted his friend, Russel of Branford, and had added three names of his opponents, Woodbridge of Hartford, Mather of Windsor and Russell of Middletown, to the originally planned list.
Little was said then, and less is remembered in these days, about a strange gift of Major John Fitch of Plainfield, a member of the upper house in that historic legislature, announced the same day the charter was approved. It consisted, we are told, of 637 aeres of land in the far northeastern town of Killingly, together with a promise of glass and nails to build a college house. The college house was not built until some years afterward, at the end of a strife over site whose outcome may not have been to the liking of Major Fitch, so it would be interesting to know whether he made good his promise about the glass and nails. As the aforesaid Killingly was the site of Timothy Wood- bridge's farm, we may suspect that the gift was made in hope in behalf of the Hartford faction. It is worthy of emphasis as the first substantial offering to the property of the Collegiate school.
The trustees lost no time in proceeding on the authority of the charter. Saybrook was chosen as a suitable place for their first meeting. The settlement there was an important one in those days, though its promoters' hopes of com- mereial greatness for it were deferred in fulfillment. It was at the month of that river which was a convenient highway to Middletown and Hartford and Windsor. It was midway of the coast between Stamford and Stonington. And these same considerations highly recommended it, in the belief of its residents, as a site for the college. At that first meeting, held on November 11, 1701, at the parsonage of Thomas Buckingham, the only representative of the Hartford faction was Noadiah Russell of Middletown. Two questions, having more eon- nection with each other than may at first appear, were of first consideration. One was the choice of a rector, the other was the place of the college. The naming of the man and the designation of the place of his labors were not simple matters of arbitrary choice. The college had no buildings, and no immediate prospect of getting any. The rector must of necessity be a minister, and most of the ministers worth while were settled over parishes to whose welfare they seemed indispensable. However, the trustees attacked their task bravely. But the discussion developed difficulties that protraeted it for three days. There seems to have been a determined effort on the part of the group from New IIaven and beyond to take the college there in the first place, but the Reverend Noadiah Russell, sole representative at the meeting of the Hartford trustees, fought fire with fire. That is, he holdly advocated the taking of the Collegiate school to Hartford. Between these two positions a compromise seemed the only possibility, and doubtless Saybrook was that compromise. Trustee Buckingham, who with James Noyes of Stonington favored this, was of course not displeased at the prospect of such a compromise.
So hopeless became the tangle that they deferred this question for a time, and attacked that of the rector. The introduction of the name of Abraham
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OLD YALE CAMPUS, LOOKING EASTWARD, NEW HAVEN
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Pierson was not a surprise, and to agree on him did not take long. Ile did not decline the offer, and it was at onee taken for granted that he would accept. It was also taken for granted that he would consent to remove to Saybrook, and that town was agreed upon, still in the spirit of compromise, as the place.
Nevertheless, Killingworth, which is now Clinton, was to be the real first place of Yale, or as the trustees could only know it, the Collegiate school. Abraham Pierson may have been willing enough to go to Saybrook, but his people were not. That is, they flatly refused to release him from his pastorate. Yes, they would consent that he teach the young men in his great parsonage on the banks of the Indian River, but in Killingworth he must remain.
This seems to have been without any formal vote of permission by the trus- tees, though they left the matter in a somewhat uncertain condition. They seem to have had an inkling that the people of Killingworth would not consent to part with Mr. Pierson, and to have left the matter of his residence somewhat indefinite. In the following March (1702) Rector Pierson began his arduous labors with one student, JJacob Ileminway of East Haven. So the first member of the college was furnished by the New Haven community. He was "all of the college" for the first half-year. They had Commencement for him, too, though it and those that followed it were, by desire of the trustees, very unpretentious affairs. Three young men entered Rector Pierson's classes for the next year. This began immediately after Commencement, for the idea of long vaeations had not yet arrived. Getting an edneation was too serious a business to be remitted for any part of the year.
So the years went on in the fine old parsonage at Killingworth, where good work was done under the able teaching of the college's first president, until this order of things was suddenly terminated by the death of Rector Pierson in March, 1707. In that five years, eighteen young men were graduated with their first degrees at the Collegiate school.
It seemed now that the old struggle over a site might begin over again. But Saybrook was the official place of the school, and the trustees of Saybrook and farther east resolved that it should become so in fact. Perhaps with a purpose to play for time, the New Haven and western trustees compromised again by the election of Reverend Samuel Andrew of Milford rector pro tem. IIe took the senior elass for instruction to his parsonage, while the other elasses were taken to the parsonage at Saybrook by Tutor Phineas Fiske, of the class of 1704. This was a bad arrangement, but for some reason or other it was con- tinued until, in 1714, the long fight over a site was concluded by the permanent choice of New Haven, and the Reverend Timothy Cutler was chosen as the third rector.
The later years of the college's wanderings were very disappointing ones for its friends. For a considerable part of the time classes were held in three places, Wethersfield competing, as it were, with Saybrook and Milford. In the first place Tutor Elisha Williams held his ground, seemingly in behalf of the Hartford County trustees, almost in defiance of the authority of the main hody. The work at Saybrook was unsatisfactory. Acting Rector Andrew at
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Milford did not enter with especial spirit into the college work, and the number of students dwindled. Especially was the lack of funds disheartening. There were no suitable buildings at any of the places, the teaching was poor and the whole situation was of faint promise.
III
The name Yale, it appears, was the magic token that was to win the college for New Haven. The chain that bound the institution to the town of John Davenport was never broken from the time he resolved to have a college "for the better trayning upp of youth in this town, that through God's blessing, they may be fitted for publique service hereafter, either in church or common- weale." But there were foes, as we have seen, to the New Haven plan, and it seemed for a time that there were few friends.
Three men had much to do with changing this condition. The first was the Reverend James Pierpont, whose unremitting but unostentatious purpose to win for New Haven has been noticed. The second was the Reverend Gurdon Saltonstall of New London, who was later to leave the pulpit for the chief magistraey of the colony. After he was made governor, he took up his resi- denee overlooking the lake which now bears his name. His purpose to bring the college to New Haven seems to have been a matter of common sense rather than partisanship. Ile realized that New Haven was the place for it. In the end, he was glad enough to use his influence for the ending of an interminable and unseemly squabble. The third friend was Jeremiah Dummer, the Mas- sachusetts colony's agent in London, later Connecticut's agent there, whose connection with the affair was to end in the enlistment of the aid of Elihu Yale.
Dummer's help was besought in 1711 by James Pierpont, who wrote asking him what could be done in London to secure funds or books for the struggling institution. It was fortunate that Dummer was a very energetic, resourceful and persistent business man, with some influential connections. He called on several important men, and as the result, secured that valuable library of some 700 volumes which was sent to Saybrook in 1714. It was that same library which, later taken from Saybrook much against the will of those who took with very poor grace the removal of the college from that town, was seriously impaired in the struggle.
The somewhat brief connection of Elihu Yale with the enterprise makes a story not so well known, but of the keenest interest to New Haven. Jeremiah Dummer practically did it all, though it will always be in interesting speeula- tion as to the influence which the Reverend Cotton Mather of Boston had in it. The idea was to have Governor Yale, who was extremely wealthy for those days, make a very substantial gift to the college, and in return have it named in his honor. It may have first occurred to the energetic Dummer-it would have been strange if it had not-but oddly enough, it seems to have been Cotton Mather who first put it unmistakably to Governor Yale. In a fit of grudge against Harvard, the great Boston divine wrote to Governor Yale in
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1717, eloquently presenting the need of funds for the college which was still trying to hold its own at New Haven, and adding: "Sir, though you have your felicities in your family, which I pray God may continue and multiply, yet certainly, if what is forming at New Haven might wear the name of Yale College, it would be better than a name of sons and daughters."
Dummer followed this up energetically. Governor Yale was not, it appears, a very spiritually minded person. He had some sentiment for the New Haven community, for, as we have seen, his father had been with the Davenport party, and had made a fortune in the town. Later he went to Boston, where Elihu Yale was born. Early in life Elihu Yale went to London, was edueated in good schools, and had gone to Madras with an East India Company adventure. Made governor of the trading post of Fort St. George, he had at the age of fifty returned to London with an almost fabulous fortune, gained, it is suggested, by means that would not have been approved even in the days when we counte- nanced "malefactors of great wealth." In London he was a typical man of the world, but at the time when Jeremiah Dummer approached him, almost seventy and looking forward with a sometimes thoughtful air. lle was childless, which one needs to know to understand the Mather reference.
This was the Elihu Yale with whom it was sought to make a trade of the honor of naming a college for a goodly bequest to it. Many a man of less eom- parative wealth than he, in our days, has given much more generously for the honor of naming a college building. It is desirable to notice just what Yale did. Hle gave thirty or forty volumes of books in 1714. After Dummer had worked with him some four months after the receipt of the Mather letter, he donated to the eollege a consignment of goods to Boston whose value he esti- mated at £800, but which, when sold, netted £562, 12s. He also promised to give £200 a year to the college, and to make a settled annual provision for it after his death. Ile died in 1721, having given nothing further, and no pro- vision for the college was found in his will.
But the $2.833, or thereabout. which the college received from Governor Yale was the largest private donation it received in rather more than its first century. Its worth was multiplied because it came at the psychologieal moment. It came at just the time when it was needed to complete the college house which was building, and it clinched in New Haven the institution which Hart- ford was still trying to wrest from the setttlement at the mouth of the Quin- nipiac. New Ilaven and the university are well content with the name Yale, and concede that the old governor earned the honor he has received.
So the dream of John Davenport, long deferred, was at length come true so far as the college was concerned. Ilis mantle had been well worn by his successor Pierpont, and his ambition also was realized. The Hartford faction, which had sought through the trustees, through the legislature, through the maintenance of a part of the college, unauthorized, at Wethersfield, and through a final attempt to take the institution to Middletown, to defeat that ambition, had lost at every point. Governor Saltonstall had been a valuable ally to the New
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Haven trustees, and even the attempt to punish him politically for his supposed partiality ingloriously failed.
The City of New Haven today is a strange contrast with that rural com- munity of less than 2,500 people which in 1720 rejoiced at the certainty that Yale had come to stay. It looks back over two centuries, however, with the realization that the history of the town and the history of the college have been as truly interwoven ever since as they were in those days of foundation struggles. But there have been times in the centuries when not all of the people have taken gracefully to the relationship. Those differences form a not uninter- esting part of the history of New Haven, and have a distinct bearing on modern New Haven. It will be worth while to trace them as a contrast with the better order which prevails today.
CHIAPTER IV THE YEARS OF DISCORD
THE CRUDE STRIFE OF TOWN AND GOWN-ITS SEQUEL IN THE MISUNDERSTANDING AND SEPARATION OF THE COMMUNITY AND THE UNIVERSITY
I
It has often been remarked that New Haven, for a city of its size, remark- ably retained the characteristics of the New England village. This is not neces- sarily, when thoughtfully expressed, meant in disparagement. It signifies that there is in the community a sort of intimacy which brings all its interests and constituents very elose together. This was especially true of the last century, and it was in considerable degree the cause of the rivalry at one time eon- spicuously existent between New Haven and its college. Or, to use the common and threadbare phrase, it accounts in a measure for the class distinctions and strife of Town and Gown.
It was impossible that the residents of New Haven should look on the mem- bers of the college as the common run of men. New Haven would never have earned the college if it had been able to eseape a certain awe of the educated man, or a decided respeet for the process. And so certain of the residents of the town cultivated and made much of the "scholars" at Yale. Coming from near or far, they were always able to command a place immediately on their arrival in the society of New Haven, a place which was, in most instanees, denied to the young man who came in from the country to work in a bank or store. The result was jealousy, both among the non-college young men who grew up in the city, and those who came in from the surrounding towns. They made common cause, and it is not surprising that they decided the "student" to be their enemy.
For this condition of things one cannot wholly exeuse the people who caused it. that is, the people who patronized the college men. But as years went on, there came into the situation another element which made it even worse. Even in the earliest days, perhaps more generally than in these days, the young man who could afford a college education was a favored mortal, set above his fellows. Often he had much money to spend. Certain of the townspeople noticed this, and the New England inclination to "make hay while the sun - shines" came to the surface. It reached the point, at one time and with some
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persons, of making the most possible out of the students. They were over- charged. sometimes, it is suspected. At least there was a tendency to encourage them in the spending of much money. They came to realize this very clearly, and naturally resented it.
We have, in brief, a condition in which the young "outlanders," as it seemed to the young men of the town, eame under favor of special privilege, entered the best society and monopolized all the girls, and generally carried themselves with an air of haughty superiority. On the other hand, the students deemed themselves the vietims of greedy tradesmen and landladies and res- taurateurs, all of whom they despised. They set themselves, in some cases, somewhat above the authority of the powers of law and order, and perpetrated the sort of pranks that were much the fashion in all colleges at some period in their growth. Yale by now has for the most part outgrown these things. which accounts for the better conditions.
The situation thus outlined is nothing new. It has been developed in almost every juxtaposition of a college and a town from the very beginning. The vonth who feels his growing learning is wont to be a supercilious, overbearing creature. If he is not that, he is likely to be so full of intensified animal spirits as to be a difficult quantity for a community to contain. New Haven simply had troubles in common with every eollege town, and it probably handled them no better than others have done.
But they form an interesting and not uninstructive story, if studied for their reason. It needs to be remembered that there was in the last century, that is up to the last third of it, no organized form of athletics at the college. Some erude games there were, but they were played haphazard. The Nineteenth eentury was well advaneed before football was played in any but the erudest way, and baseball as we know it eame even later. Yet here was a considerable and growing body of young men, with all the surplus energy that young men have in these days. They were somewhat freed from the restraints of home, and the rigor of the early college discipline had been lightened. Something had to happen. It seems that something did happen.
The story of the "Bully Club" is preserved only among rare Yale traditions, and New Haven people have forgotten it. It seems to be included mostly be- tween the years 1807 and 1843. One ean only guess at the origin of the custom of choosing a class giant-there were giants in those days-as elass Bully, and investing him with the great oaken club as his badge of office. It would have been a harmless eustom enough, except that no pent up Utiea. that is to say, Campus, could contain such prowess. The Bully and his followers natur- ally went out to do slaughter among their natural enemies, the Philistines. These were the "muckers" of the early days. And there is a more or less misty tradition that these encounters were not always matters of mere jest.
Perhaps it was when Isaac T. Preston of 1812 was Bully, perhaps it was in the reign of the no less renowned Asa Thurston of the class of 1816, that there was one of these fights in a notorious tavern on the water front in Fair Haven, which seetion of the town the students knew, perhaps from the company
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they sought there, as "Dragon." The Bully and his band on the one side, and an assorted bunch of oystermen, sailors and tough townsmen on the other, met there and fought to a draw, with some breaking of heads. There seems to have been a sequel soon after, when students bathing at Long Wharf were attacked by longshoremen, mariners and wharf rats, and badly worsted.
There were a good many such fights in the early part of the century, and the legend of Bullyism is rich with glorious deeds. There is, for instance, that thrilling tale of how "three hundred students and their teachers held back a mob of three thousand (sie) townies." But the faculty eventually eame to the opinion that even such glory eost too high, and in 1840 abolished the Bully Club. It lived in defiance of the ediet for three years longer, and then gradually disappeared.
More definite, and also more serious, is the story of some mob outbreaks which owed no origin to the Bully Club. The "Medical College riot" of 1824 was the first of these, and indieates the general spirit of disregard of the feel- ings of the townspeople on the part of the students, and of smouldering suspicion and dislike on the part of the townspeople. A grave was found broken in West Haven Cemetery, and the recently buried body of a young woman was missing. Suspicion was at once directed to the students of the Medical College. which was then located at the corner of Grove and Prospect streets. An excited crowd gathered on the Green, and resolved on stern aetion. One of the town eannon was secured, and the mob proceeded to the Medical College building. What might have happened if the militia had not received warning at the same time it is difficult to guess. The soldiers arrived before or soon after the crowd, and restrained the mob until a committee could be appointed to proceed with some order. A search of the building revealed the body beneath the pave- ment in the cellar. Then the excitement flared to its greatest height, and it took all the force of the soldiers to prevent serious damage to the building. Eventually the mob went back to the Green, where a greater procession was formed and returned the body in state to its resting place in West Haven. It was many years before the effect of that incident passed off. One person was imprisoned, and a stringent law was passed against such outrages.
Then there was the familiar strife between the students and the members of the volunteer fire companies, most common about the middle of the century. They may have had their origin, at least they had their aggravation, from en- counters on the Green. This was all the athletic field the students had; it was also the seene of the manenvers of the fire companies. The latter were fond of contests to see which company could throw a stream of water highest, and Center Church spire was a favorite target. If the students chaneed to be hav- ing on the Green at the same time one of their erude games of football, it is easy enough to imagine how an encounter started. The hose was dragged across the football field ; perhaps its holders were not careful to keep the streams of water from playing on the players. In retaliation, ready knives would now and then eut a line of hose. There were toughs among the firemen; there were hot-bloods, some of them southerners, among the students. And this was not
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so long before the Civil War. Some of the students and perhaps some of the firemen carried pistols for just such an emergency, and one account has it that in the worst of these fights, in which the Bully Club may have figured, a fireman, William Miles, was shot dead.
There is some definite account of what may have been the culmination of these encounters, on October 30, 1841. It was the day of the annual review of the New Haven fire department. This was one of the times when the hose playing and the football playing elashed, and the students were worsted. Later in the day they retaliated by interrupting the firemen's banquet, which was in the basement of the old State House. They were driven off after a fight. Next night some students broke into an engine house near the college and injured the apparatus, for which prank the college authorities had to settle roundly.
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