USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 3 The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut > Part 33
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It is only fair to say at this juncture that not all the Connecticut emigrants to California during the gold rush were of this high type. Bret Harte, that cynical author, in the Argonauts of North Liberty, portrayed four Connecticut emigrants, one woman and three men, who went to California in the early 'fifties, and were of the sort whom no missionary, home or foreign, could appar- ently have kept in the straight and narrow path of con- formity.
On the other hand, the strong Puritan instinct for law and order had no more typical representative than Stephen J. Field, who was born in Haddam, Connecticut, in 1816. He set sail for California via Panama in 1849, and went soon to Marysville, then a center of the gold- mining region. "The day he arrived he purchased-on
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paper-sixty-five town lots, and a few days later insti- gated the organization of a local government, he himself being elected alcalde. In this capacity he enforced a stern justice, and order reigned." He became prominent as a lawyer, then as a member of the California Supreme Court, and in 1863 was appointed by Abraham Lincoln a justice of the United States Supreme Court.
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WHILE California and the Pacific Northwest were attracting settlers from Connecticut, another region made a tremendous appeal to the opponents of slavery everywhere. In March, 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill became a law and at once work began on organized lines by both Northern and Southern sympathizers to gain these new territories for their own cause.
On March 31, 1856, the streets of New Haven saw a band of men, seventy strong, cheered on by Henry Ward Beecher, by Professor Silliman of Yale College, and by many other tense and interested persons, to make the journey to "bleeding Kansas." The company is said to have included tradesmen, teachers of music, tutors in Yale College, politicians, farmers, and ministers. They went by boat to New York, by ferry to Jersey City, by train via Indianapolis to St. Louis, and then by the steamer Clara up the Missouri to Kansas City. Several days were spent in purchasing oxen and needed supplies for the remainder of the journey to be made by wagon. "They had been preceded a week or two by a scouting party of five young men, who as early as April of the same year had stood upon a sightly hilltop in Kansas looking down upon the broad and beautiful valley of the Kaw, with its rampart of low hills encircling it on every side. This seemed the promised land to the Kansas emi-
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grants from Connecticut. The large river and two smaller streams made it a well-watered section and there at Wabaunsee they awaited the coming of their fellow colonists."
This company was only the beginning of a large emi- gration from Connecticut to Kansas. "The leader of the Connecticut Colony was Hon. Charles B. Lines, a man of firm will, determined spirit, a temperance war-horse and a devoted Christian." He was just the one to lead his companions through the hardships and perils inci- dental to the journey and to the establishment of what is now the town of Wabaunsee.
Henry Ward Beecher's part in the energizing of this Connecticut colony was also noteworthy. His interest in this special colony arose from the fact that New Haven was his father's birthplace and the home of other ances- tors. He was personally present in the North Church, New Haven, called "the Old Fort," on March 22, 1856, when Lines's company was being recruited, and then and there pledged twenty-five rifles as a gift from his own congregation in Brooklyn. Six days later he wrote a long letter to Lines, wishing the emigrants Godspeed and announcing the desire of a friend and parishioner to present to the company twenty-five copies of the Bible, "thus matching every rifle with a copy of the Holy Scripture."
Other companies of emigrants, which were recruited not only in Connecticut but also in other parts of New England, followed rapidly. Men of such standing as Leonard Bacon, Lyman Beecher, Edward W. Beecher, and Thomas Starr King, later pastor of a church in Oak- land, California, united in a public appeal on behalf of the Emigrant Aid Company. That company assisted the New Haven group which arrived well armed and with
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steam engines, printing presses, and machinery for saw- mills and gristmills. They became a power in Kansas and their influence is felt even today. The Reverend Louis Bodwell, born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1827, who reached Kansas in 1856, was twice pastor of the Topeka Congregational Church, served as superintendent of mis- sions, and was one of the founders of Washburn College.
A unique character who left an indelible impress on Kansas was John Brown, born in Torrington, Connecti- cut, in 1800. He migrated to ten different places and met with financial disaster in each new home. In 1855, five of his sons went to Kansas and after a few months appealed to their father for guns and ammunition to carry on open warfare against the proponents of slavery. Disguised as a surveyor, Brown set out for Kansas in a wagon filled with the desired supplies. Upon his arrival he became the captain of the local militia company. Having little suc- cess in the bloodless Wakarusa War, Brown decided to turn to assassination to accomplish his ends. A list of victims was drawn up and Brown with six others mur- dered five men on the night of May 24, 1856. Eventually Brown and his men were defeated and forced to leave Kansas. Brown's later history is well known, his raid on Harpers Ferry and subsequent death sentence and hang- ing being one of the most stirring incidents which led to the Civil War.
Nor did Kansas absorb all the settlers, for in July and August, 1854, New England settlers began to leave their homes for Nebraska. In 1855 the Reverend Reuben Gay- lord of Norfolk, Connecticut, who had been for seven- teen years a home missionary in Iowa, went to Omaha to see what were the spiritual needs of that region. He preached on Sunday, and after the service was asked by a Mr. Richardson, a native of Vermont, who had been
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lieutenant governor of Michigan, to stay as pastor of a Congregational church if one could be formed. The fol- lowing May, Gaylord returned to Omaha and began his ministry with a church of eight members-the first Con- gregational society in Nebraska. During the remaining months of the year he established four more, at Bellevue, Florence, Fort Calhoun, and Fontanelle. The Fontanelle church of twenty-four members was made up of colonists from Quincy, Illinois, who in plotting their town, in the previous year, had set off a tract of one hundred acres for a college. As some of the leading members of the colony were Baptists, it was at first intended to represent that denomination; but later the site was offered to the Congregationalists, who then founded "Nebraska Uni- versity." At least three other towns wanted a college, but the American Home Missionary Society determined to encourage but one college for their denomination in Nebraska, and frowned down other plans. When the one college was moved to Crete in 1873, it became Doane College, as it is today.
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IN the settlement of the Dakotas, Connecticut did not play a very large part, although the little memorial church in Bonhomme, South Dakota, built in 1885, contains a window in memory of George Hyde, a Chris- tian layman of Norwich, Connecticut, and a door into the sanctuary in memory of the East Hartford, Con- necticut, church. In 1881 there arrived a group who constituted the Yale Dakota Band. All its members had received their theological training at Yale and to their efforts, along with those of such an outstanding man as Dr. Joseph Ward, is due much of the strength of South Dakota today. In North Dakota, Amenia was founded
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by settlers from Sharon, Connecticut, who immediately planted their church and "never sought from Eastern sources a single dollar in its support."
Here and there, especially as teachers, ministers, doctors, and lawyers, one finds Connecticut settlers in the other states west of the Mississippi, but the tale of Connecticut emigration thither awaits detailed studies to be made in the future.
Not only were Connecticut settlers among the pioneers in many Western states, but also in each later generation not a few natives of Connecticut have been moving into the West and have become useful and valued citizens of their adopted commonwealths. Wherever they have gone, Connecticut men and women have been true to their inherited traditions by promoting education, religion, and sound government.
Bibliographical Note
BY permission of the publishers, the material for this Pamphlet is taken very largely from the author's book, The expansion of New England (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909); from her study entitled “Some activi- ties of the Congregational Church west of the Missis- sippi" in Essays in American history, dedicated to Frederick Jackson Turner on the occasion of his presidency of the American Historical Association (New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1910); and from her study entitled "The Erie Canal and the settlement of the West" in the Publications of the Buffalo (New York) Historical Society (vol. 14, 1910). The bibliographies in each of these furnish references to a wide range of materials. Reference should also be made to Howard A. Bridgman, New England in the life of the world (Boston, 1920).
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PUBLICATIONS OF THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
The Committee on Historical Publications of the Connecticut Tercentenary Commission bas issued, during the past few years, a series of small pamphlets upon a great variety of topics, selected for the purpose of making better known among the people of Connecticut and others as many of the features as possible of the history and life of Connecticut as colony and state. No attempt has been made to deal with these subjects in either logical or chronological order, the intention having been to issue pamphlets at any time upon any subject that seemed to be of interest and worthy to be made a matter of record.
The series will be completed with the issuance of a total number of sixty pamphlets. A small supplementary pamphlet providing biographical data about the authors and other information about the series has been prepared, and may be obtained without charge from the Yale University Press.
V. The Story of the War with the Pequots Re-Told, by H. BRADSTREET. 32 pp. Illustrated. . 25c. 75c. . 25 ℃ . 25c.
VI. The Settlement of the Connecticut Towns, by D. DEMING. 80 pp. Illus- trated.
VII. The Settlement of Litchfield County, by D. DEMING. 16 pp. .
VIII. George Washington and Connecticut in War and Peace, by G. M. DUTCHER. 36 pp. Illustrated. .
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X. Connecticut Taxation, 1750-1775, by L. H. GIPSON. 44 pp. · XI. Boundaries of Connecticut, by R. M. HOOKER. 38 pp. Illustrated.
XII. Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut, by J. F. KELLY. 32 pp.
XIII. Milford, Connecticut: The Early Development of a Town as Shown in Its Land Records, by L. W. LABAREE. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XIV. Roads and Road-Making in Colonial Connecticut, by I. S. MITCHELL. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XV. Hitchcock Chairs, by M. R. MOORE. 16 pp. Illustrated.
XVI. The Rise of Liberalism in Connecticut, 1828-1850, by J. M. MORSE. 48 pp. XVII. Under the Constitution of 1818: The First Decade, by J. M. MORSE. 24 pp.
XVIII. The New England Meeting House, by N. PORTER. 36 pp.
XIX. The Indians of Connecticut, by M. SPIESS. 36 pp.
XX. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, by G. M. DUTCHER and A. C. BATES. 20 pp. Illustrated. .
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XXII. The Hartford Chest, by H. W. ERVING. 16 pp. Illustrated. 25c.
XXIII. Early Clockmaking in Connecticut, by P. R. HOOPES. 32 pp. . 25c.
XXIV. The Hartford Convention, by W. E. BUCKLEY. 32 pp. . 25 c .
XXV. The Spanish Ship Case: A Troublesome Episode for Connecticut, 1752- 1758, by R. M. HOOKER. 34 pp. 25c.
XXVI. The Great Awakening and Other Revivals in the Religious Life of Con- necticut, by M. H. MITCHELL. 64 pp. 5ºc.
XXVII. Music Vale Seminary, 1835-1876, by F. H. JOHNSON. 24 pp. Illustrated. 25c. XXVIII. Migrations from Connecticut Prior to 1800, by L. K. M. ROSENBERRY. 36 pp. 25c. . [See Over
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I. Connecticut and the British Government, by C. M. ANDREWS. 36 pp. 25c. II. The Connecticut Intestacy Law, by C. M. ANDREWS. 32 pp. 25c.
III. The Charter of Connecticut, 1662, by C. M. ANDREWS and A. C. BATES. 24 Pp. 25c. 25c.
IV. Thomas Hooker, by W. S. ARCHIBALD. 20 pp. . ·
XXIX. Connecticut's Tercentenary: A Retrospect of Three Centuries of Self- Government and Steady Habits, by G. M. DUTCHER. 32 pp. · . XXX. The Beginnings of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, by O. S. SEY- MOUR. 32 pp.
XXXI. The Loyalists of Connecticut, by EPAPHRODITUS PECK. 32 pp. . XXXII. The Beginnings of Connecticut, 1632-1662, by C. M. ANDREWS. 84 pp.
XXXIII. Connecticut Inventors, by J. W. ROE. 32 pp. .
XXXIV. The Susquehannah Company: Connecticut's Experiment in Expansion, by J. P. BOYD. 48 pp. ·
XXXV. The Regicides in Connecticut, by L. A. WELLES. 32 pp. .
XXXVI. Connecticut Newspapers in the Eighteenth Century, by J. M. MORSE. 32 pp.
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XXVIII. Farmington, One of the Mother Towns of Connecticut, by QUINCY BLAKELY. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XXXIX. Yale Law School: The Founders and the Founders' Collection, by F. C. HICKS. 48 pp. Illustrated. . ·
XL. Agricultural Economy and the Population in Eighteenth-Century Con- necticut, by A. L. OLSON. 32 pp.
25c.
XLI. The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut, by A. F. MUNICH. 32 pp· . ·
XLII. A History of Banking in Connecticut, by FRANCIS PARSONS. 32 pp. · XLIII. The History of Insurance in Connecticut, by A. A. WELCH. 36 pp. · XLIV. The Rise of Manufacturing in Connecticut, by CLIVE DAY. 32 pp. .
XLV. The First Twenty Years of Railroads in Connecticut, by SIDNEY WITH- INGTON. 36 pp. Illustrated.
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XLVI. Forty Years of Highway Development in Connecticut, 1895-1935, by the STAFF OF THE STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT. 20 pp. Map. . XLVII. A Lawyer of Kent: Barzillai Slosson and His Account Books, 1794-1812, by MABEL SEYMOUR. 36 pp. ·
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XLVIII. The Rise and Fall of the New Haven Colony, by C. M. ANDREWS. 56 pp. XLIX. The Development of the Brass Industry in Connecticut, by W. G. LATHROP. 32 pp.
L. The Colonial Trade of Connecticut, by R. M. HOOKER. 44 pp. .
LI. The Literature of Connecticut, by S. T. WILLIAMS. 24 pp.
LII. The History of Tobacco Production in Connecticut, by A. F. McDONALD. 32 pp. . 25 c . 25.c.
LIII. Connecticut's Contribution to the Development of the Steamboat, by P. R. HOOPES. 32 pp. · . LIV. Migrations from Connecticut After 1800, by L. K. M. ROSENBERRY. 32 pp. · LV. Educational Problems at Yale College in the Eighteenth Century, by ALEXANDER COWIE. 32 pp. .
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LVI. The Clergy of Connecticut in Revolutionary Days, by A. M. BALDWIN. 32 pp.
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LVII. Charities and Corrections in Connecticut, by W. W. T. SQUIRE. 32 pp. LVIII. Connecticut Influences in Western Massachusetts and Vermont, by R. L. MORROW. 24 pp. 25c.
LIX. The Hartford Wits, by A. R. MARBLE. 32 pp. 25c.
LX. The Achievement of Religious Liberty in Connecticut, by P. W. COONS. 32 pp. 25c.
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XXXVII. Slavery in Connecticut, by R. F. WELD. 32 pp. ·
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LV Educational Problems at Yale College in the Eighteenth Century ALEXANDER COWIE
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1936
The Printing-Office of the Yale University Press
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
LV Educational Problems at Yale College in the Eighteenth Century
ALEXANDER COWIE
C
I OLLEGE education in Connecticut during the mid-eighteenth century meant, of course, education at Yale College. The founding of Yale is ordinarily referred to the year 170I (some authorities say 1700), when ten ministers repre- senting the principal towns of Connecticut came together for this purpose at Branford. Each minister bore a gift of books, which he deposited on a table, repeating the formula, "I give these books for the founding of a College in this Colony." Although the Collegiate School, as it was at first called, was thus born under the blessed auspices of religion, the years of its minority were pre- carious ones during which its very life was threatened by an ignoble controversy between Saybrook, Wethersfield, and New Haven as to where it should have its permanent home. In 1717 custody of the college was finally given to New Haven by a decree of the general assembly,
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which subsequently ordered "that a State house should be built at Hartford to compensate for the college at New Haven; that £25 sterling should be given to Say- brook to compensate for the removal of the college."
Even after the decision to award the college to New Haven, dispute and experiment kept its affairs in a state bordering on chaos until 1726 when, upon the installation of Rector Elisha Williams, the "regular life of the college may be said to have begun." Thomas Clap succeeded Elisha Williams in 1739. The era of good feeling inaugu- rated by his predecessor continued for some years during Clap's administration; but domestic difficulties gradually recurred which ultimately became so serious that they were solved only when President Clap resigned his office after scenes of violence, in 1766. This crisis was reached largely because of the personal unpopularity of President Clap, an able but headstrong man. It served, however, to emphasize the need for reform of archaic methods which vitiated college education at Yale and elsewhere in the colonies during the eighteenth century. During the in- cumbency of Acting President Daggett, who was more amenable to suggestion, the harshness of the adminis- tration was temporarily relaxed and some revision of the curriculum was secured. Yet the immediate gains were small. Consequently, the slender progress made at Yale in the period just before the Revolution serves to reveal the vast gulf between the educational ideals of that day and this. The later years of the century, however, brought the beginnings of better days not only for the nation but also for the college, which enjoyed progres- sive leadership under Presidents Ezra Stiles and Timothy Dwight.
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AMID the profusion of buildings which now flourish on the campus at New Haven it is difficult to call up the day of Yale's modest beginnings. Until 1752 there was only one building, known at first as Yale College and later as Old College. This was a three-story frame struc- ture of doubtful beauty built in 1717-1718 near what is now the corner of College and Chapel Streets. An "elon- gated and pinched-together edifice," it contained cham- bers for about sixty students, besides a hall, a library, and a kitchen. A British traveler who saw it in 1750 reported it as "very much decayed." At that time it could no longer accommodate all the students, who numbered more than one hundred and fifty. Connecticut Hall, which may still be seen, somewhat altered, on the Yale campus, was built in 1750-1752, partly with funds derived from a lottery sanctioned by the general assem- bly. It had three stories and a cellar, and it was used chiefly as a dormitory. The college was growing so fast at this time, however, that in less than a decade a new building was ordered, New Hall or Chapel, begun in 1761 and first occupied in 1763. The library was given new quarters in the floor above the chapel. In the early days, despite the reasonable generosity of the general assembly, sufficient funds were hard to secure, so that the interiors of both Connecticut Hall and New Hall remained un- finished long after the buildings were occupied.
The faculty was correspondingly small. At first, of course, it was made up largely of Harvard graduates, but by the middle of the century the college had begun the practice of filling vacancies mainly from among its own alumni. Until 1755 the teaching staff consisted of the president and two or three tutors. In 1755 Naphtali
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Daggett, later acting president, was installed as professor of divinity. Lectures were given by the president and the professor, and recitations were heard by the tutors. The president normally gave special attention to the senior class, and each of the tutors was assigned to one of the other classes. As will be seen, the professor of divinity was an exceedingly busy person, for education in Puritan America was firmly coordinated with religion. As the sign of their office the tutors wore black silk gowns with arm bands; the professor and the president were distinguished by robes and wigs. Theoretically the students showed every mark of respect for the staff: the college Laws (Statuta) required that they should. Due formality doubtless obtained in times of peace; but there came a day when to be on the staff was to be exposed not only to indignity but to actual hazard.
Prospective students of the college generally prepared by going into residence with a minister for an indeter- minate length of time. Perhaps partly on account of the informality of this arrangement and partly on account of the lack of equipment for some kinds of instruction in the minister's home, the preparatory period was fre- quently short; and it is certain that boys often entered college at a considerably earlier age than they now do. When the minister felt that his charge was adequately prepared, he dispatched him to an examination before the president and staff. According to the Laws of 1755 a candidate for admission was expected to show that he could read at sight and construe Cicero, Virgil, and the Greek Testament; had learned thoroughly the common rules of prosody and arithmetic; could write "true" Latin prose; and could give satisfactory evidence of his blameless life and good moral character. These require- ments do not look excessively light; but later criticism
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of the college dictates the inference that the candidates were not held to a very rigid interpretation of the Laws. At least one person, John Trumbull, the author of M'Fingal, passed the entrance examination (in 1757) at the age of seven-though, needless to say, he did not enter college immediately. Even allowing for the excep- tional precocity of Trumbull, it does not seem likely that the examination was a very searching one. To have made it so would have been to reject many candidates, among them the more affluent young men. Of those students who did not intend to capitalize their education by going into the ministry, a majority were "gentlemen's" sons with no desire to know the "long fatigue of turning books." That the Corporation took cognizance of social rank is clear from the fact that prior to 1767 the official list of students was kept, not alphabetically, but in order of social prominence.
After the candidate for admission had passed the entrance examination, his father or guardian gave the steward a bond sufficient to cover the quarterly bills- a wise if not always effective precaution, as the turbulent 'sixties proved. The average expenses, though variable, seem not to have been great. In 1760, for example, tuition was six shillings and six pence a quarter. Moreover there were some attempts to assist the poorer boys, especially if they happened to be good students, by means of scholarships and waiterships. Having arranged for the payment of his bills, the candidate was obliged to pur- chase a copy of the college Laws, a grim handbook in Latin, which when signed by the president and one or more of the tutors, was the evidence of his matriculation. He was then assigned to a chamber, which he scrutinized carefully for signs of damage chargeable to the preceding occupant. Thereafter he was financially responsible for
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all damage to the room except that which occurred Providentia Dei inevitabili. Thus thoroughly impressed by his responsibilities, the young man became a member of the college community. The academic year began late in October and ran, with short vacations in January and May, until the following September. Commencement was held on the second Wednesday in September. Thereupon ensued the long vacation, a period of several weeks, before the new year began.
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THE daily regimen at college seems to have been defi- nitely planned so as to reduce to a minimum the time during which the devil might find employment for idle hands. The day began with the ringing of the bell by the butler "between six o'clock and the rising of the sun." After prayers conducted by the president, the students repaired to commons, where a tutor or a senior asked a blessing over and returned thanks for a meal that seldom inspired gratitude in the undergraduate heart. There was liberty after breakfast for a half-hour, after which the ringing of the bell warned the students to their studies, at which they were to remain, unless called out for a college exercise, until dinner. Dinner was followed by a free period of an hour and a half, during which such comparatively innocent amusements as playing football in the college yard and bouncing a ball against the wall of the college building were prohibited. Then study was once more the order of the day until supper. After eve- ning prayers there was another recess until nine o'clock when the evening study period began. How late the students were expected to study, the Laws do not vouch- safe; but there is reason to believe (and hope) that after
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