USA > Georgia > Clarke County > Athens > Catalogue of the trustees, officers, alumni and matriculates of the University of Georgia from 1785 to 1901 : with A historical sketch > Part 3
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The last two proved unprofitable investments. The mess hall scheme was not even attempted, and the house was for years tenanted by renters, excepting a brief occu- pancy by a professor. But in 1898, the scheme was revived with such success that it has become a potent factor in college life.
The High School was opened in January, 1862, with most flattering prospects, but the varying fortunes of en- suing years made impossible the development of the plan . for which it was intended.
The resignation of President Church left the college without an executive head.
The board seemed at a loss to whom to turn, and were on the point of adjourning without action, when a trustee, who had taken his seat for the first time, arose and said, that he could point the board to a gentleman in every way fitted for the place by scholarship, eminent piety, broad culture and experience in teaching. That man was Rev. Andrew A. Lipscomb, of Alabama.
So cordial was his endorsement and so convincing was the testimony to his worth that a committee was appointed to wait on Dr. Lipscomb at his home, notify him of his election as chancellor and urge his acceptance. The committee visited Alabama without delay. Dr. Lipscomb, after a brief consideration of the offer, ac- cepted the appointment and assumed its duties the fol- lowing year.
More than passing notice is due to some of the gen- tlemen who had severed their connection with the Uni- versity. The LeContes were native Georgians, both alumni and honor men of the University. Their difficul- ties here were by no means due to incapacity orlack of effective teaching. Both men of piety and pure lives, lovable in their characters, devoted to scientific research, they had the active talent which has put them in the
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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA.
front rank of America's savants. They, with Professors Broun and Venable, represented the advanced thought of the day. They believed the University should be at least a high-grade college, and that University methods should be introduced at Athens. Dr. Church, conserva- tive and wise, opposed radical changes being made and declared that the University system was unsuited to the age at which students attended this college. The young professors espoused the geological doctrine of the crea- tion of the world. Dr. Church abhorred it as the rankest heresy. The one party were disposed to relax the exact- ions of police duty on the campus and to put more ro- sponsibility for good conduct on the boys themselves. Dr. Church regarded strict discipline as the foundation stone of the college edifice.
With such divergent views, a rupture was inevita- ble, and the board, themselves conservative almost to "old fogyism," sustained the president when the issue was made.
The LeContes went to Columbia, S, C., and after the war, to the University of California, at Berkely, build- ing an enviable reputation as teachers and scientists. Dr. John LeConte died a few years ago the president of that University. Dr. Joseph LeConte, full of honors. passed away during the present year.
Professor Venable's connection with the University was too brief to make much of her history. He was known during the War betwee the States as Adjutant to the great commander Gen. Robert E. Lee, and for many years since, was Professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia.
1861-1866.
The five years following Dr. Lipscomb's inaugura- tion were not conducive to study nor to the growth of the University in any respect.
The fall of 1860, pregnant with important issues, stirred the whole South, and the election of Mr. Lincoln, followed by the secession of South Carolina and, a few weeks later, by the secession of Georgia, kept the students and the faculty at the highest pitch of excitement. The
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year 1861 opened with one hundred and twenty-three students enrolled. Before midsummer, seventy-five had enlisted and were then in the army, and nearly all the others were preparing to volunteer.
There was drilling and studying of tactics, and marching and countermarching. With or without per- mission of parents or faculty, the boys left for their homes or to join the companies already in the camps, or those being formed for service in the army, little dream- ing what the next four years held in store for them. The attendance steadily decreased and cach session opened with fewer numbers than the close of the pre- ceding one.
President Davis was petitioned by the chancellor in behalf of the University, to exempt from conscription all college students under twenty-one years of age. The president replied that he had no control in that matter, which was determined by the act of Congress.
Times grew harder. The income of the college was seriously diminished. Salaries were reduced at first twenty per cent. and afterwards one hundred per cent., the chancellor receiving $250 per annum in Confederate money.
In October, 1863, the college was closed in conse- quence of a proclamation of Governor Brown, calling out State troops and home guard companies for the defense of Georgia after the capture of Chattanooga by the Fed- erals. This proclamation took away the chancellor, all the professors and the students, the most of whom joined a company raised in Athens and attached to a regiment commanded by Dr. Mell. The dormitory buildings were now occupied by the families of refugees from Now Orleans, Mobile and Savannah. The High School was converted into an hospital. From this time until Jan- uary, 1866, history is silent as to the University.
But though the University was silent, not so her alumni. They were busily engaged in making a history, whose pages glow with bold words and braye deeds, with victories and with privations which have -not been surpassed and which will never be forgotten. To repeat their deeds, would be to recite the story of every cam-
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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA.
paign from Sumter to Appomattox. To name the he- roes of the war, would be to call the roll of half the cat- alogue of students. From secession to surrender, the sons of the University illustrated their Alma Mater in field and forum, proving themselves in both, the peers of the best men of America.
The old campus presented a woeful appearance after the close of the war. The walks were overgrown with grass, weeds grew rampant everywhere, fences were broken or burned, windows demolished, and the interior of the chapel and dormitories hacked and smoked, and in every way disfigured by their late tenants, the Fed- eral soldiers.
The summer of 1865, Dr. Lipscomb preached the commencement sermon at the Presbyterian church. The trustees at that meeting determined to re-open the col- lege, notwithstanding the distressing condition of the people.
The chancellor and faculty were requested to have the premises put in order and to make arrangements to re- sume the work of the institution.
Gen. Steedman, the military governor of Georgia, had the garrison removed from the campus to the High School. The buildings were thoroughly purified and whitewashed and some semblance of respectability was imparted to them. In New College a boarding house for students was opened under the direction of the chan- collor.
The one session plan was adopted, having all the vacation in the summer, and has continued ever since to be the law of the college.
In that year of 1865, occurred the death of Hon. Asbury Hull, for forty-seven years the honored secretary and treasurer of the University of Georgia. Though never a member of the board, his advice and counsel were always sought in questions of interest to the college and his excellent judgment and marked executive abil- ity were often invoked to aid the purposes of the trus- toes.
Dr. Lipscomb, Dr. Mell, Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Wad- dell and Dr. Jones wore in their places on January 5th,
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1866, and the session opened with seventy-eight stu- dents present. For a few years after the war, the class of students was unlike any that had ever attended col- lege before. Many of them were grown men and most of them had been through the costly experience of a four year's war, with all its lessons of endurance and self- denial. They had not come for pastime or to idle away their time. They were in dead earnest. It was a ques- tion of food and raiment, a struggle for existence. Poorly fitted for a college curriculum, it was only by hard work that they kept up with the requirements. But those were the men who a few years later swayed the sceptre of the State and redeemed Georgia from the blighting curse of the carpet-bagger. All honor to them and their persevering industry.
1866-1872.
At the session of the board in July, 1866, a profes- sional school of engineering was established and General Martin L. Smith was elected professor. General Smith was a distinguished engineer officer of the war and would have brought great ability to his chair, but unfor- tunately died before the opening of the term. The work of the school was postponed until the next year, when Capt. L. H. Charbonnier was appointed to the vacancy.
The annual commencement, which had been ad- vanced to July, was now restored to its old date in August. This action of the board, it was said, was due to the ladies of Athens. As one of the trustees said, "it was a ques- tion of watermelons."
In 1868, the number of students reached 354. How- ever, of these, 132 were students in the high school de- partment, many of them mature men, old soldiers seeking to make up the lost years they had spent in the field. The tuition fees amounted to $15,000 and the prospects of the college warranted the establishment of a chair of History and Political Science, to which Hon. Alexander II. Stephens was elected, but which he declined on account of ill health.
The next year the time-honored custom of before breakfast recitations was abolished and the hasty morn-
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ing toilet, the hurry and scurry to answer at morning prayers was henceforth but a memory of the past, no doubt to the delight of both students and professors.
It may be doubted whether the early prayers ever found the students in a devotional frame of mind. Many a boy has appeared in the chapel two minutes out of bed, sans socks, sans trousers, sans coat, his slippers and dress- ing gown alone saving him from the charge of indecency.
For some time efforts had been made to arouse among the alumni a greater interest in the University. The sug- gestion was made by the chancellor, adopted by the board and authorized by legislative enactment, to add four more trustees, one to be elected annually by the alumni society. The trustees first elected under this law were N. J. Ham- mond, Pope Barrow, A. O. Bacon and John C. Ruther- ford. This new privilege, added to the action of the board setting apart a day at commencement for the alumni orations, brought an increased attendance upon their meetings for some years.
1872-1873.
In 1862, by an act of Congress, thirty thousand acres of public lands for each representative of each State were appropriated to the States for the " maintenance and sup- port of at least one college, where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such a manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to pro- mote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life."
Owing to Georgia being out of the Union at the time, and very busily engaged in getting back in for sev- eral years afterwards, it was not until March, 1866, that our Legislature accepted the grant. The same year the governor was directed to apply for and receive the scrip, sell it to the best advantage and invest the proceeds of the sale in bonds of this State and disburse the interest of said investment for the support and maintenance of a college, such as was contemplated by the act of congress.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH.
The "Land-serip," so-called, was a warrant of the United States Government authorizing the State, or its trans- ferree, to locate so many acres of public lands not other- wise appropriated and sell the same for the purposes of the act.
The governor sold this scrip to parties in Ohio for $243,000, which amount as a principal fund is held for- ever without diminution by the State.
On March 30, 1872, a contract was made between the governor and the trustees of the University, by which the latter administered the fund.
That year the attendance at the University reached the highest point in its history-318-of whom 94 were State college students and 54 were high school students.
The necessity for more room for laboratories and class-rooms was so apparent, and the prospects of the col- lege so flattering, that the city of Athens, by a vote of its citizens, donated $25,000 to the University for a building to supply the want. This was done in recognition of the services the University had done the town as its virtual founder, and for years its main support.
The following year, Chancellor Lipscomb resigned.
Andrew Adgate Lipscomb was a native of Virginia. His boyhood was spent in the historic region of Manassas, and every foot of that fiercely contested ground was fa- miliar and its features distinct in his recollection. Dr. Lipscomb was a scholar of great erudition and a lecturer of great power. As a sermonizer he was prone to get beyond the depth of his audience, but at times, both in pulpit and on the rostrum, he rose to flights of eloquence rarely equalled in a land of orators. He was essentially a benevolent man, large-hearted and loving. It was his fault, if fault it could be called, to think two well of everyone. He never recognized the "old Adam," nor admitted the existence of "pure cussedness" in any boy. Though abhorring discipline in its strictest sense, Dr. Lipscomb, by personal appeals to the better nature of his boys-"My dear boys, " as he was wont to call them-and by carnest personal interviews, awakened in many a stu- dent aspirations to a nobler life. While chancellor he in- augurated the Sabbath afternoon service for students. In
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these lectures he was at his best. Brief-never longer than half-hour-pointed, and perfect gems of thought and delivery, they attracted large audiences from the city, taxing the utmost capacity of the prayer-room. A. master of elocution, a thorough rhetorician and an enthu- siast in teaching, the careers of his pupils, many of them prominent men in this and other states, is the measure of Dr. Lipscomb's success.
1873-1878.
Chancellor Lipscomb was succeeded by Rev. Henry H. Tucker, D. D.
The first annual report of Chancellor Tucker di- vulged a woeful condition as to the discipline in the college.
The Doctor declared the scholarship medal system a failure and the society medals a source of great trouble, and altogether found much to criticise that was left over from the last administration.
The result was a reorganization of the faculty. The plan of reorganization declared the chancellor's office to be one of honor and distinction without salary. It was his duty to preside at commencement and to confer de- grees, the faculty being left to select its own chairman. This much of the plan, however, was repealed soon after to the extent of making the chancellor also a professor as he had always been.
During the three years of Dr. Tucker's administra- tion, the roll of matriculates steadily decreased from 266 to 116. Dr. Tucker attributed the decline to the con- tinued changes in management in the University and the utter unfitness of the University system, as adopted, to the class of immature students who attend our colleges.
Whatever were the true causes of the decline, the responsibility of the Chancellor, justly or unjustly, was not questioned, and the trustees cut the Gordian knot by asking for his resignation.
Henry Holcombe Tucker was born in Warren county, Georgia, May 10, 1819. He entered the University of Pennsylvania, but graduated at Columbian College, in Washington City, in 1838. He taught in the Southern
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HISTORICAL SKETCH.
Female College at LaGrange, and in 1853, was offered the presidency of Wake Forest College in North Carolina, which he declined.
On the re-organization of Mercer University in 1866, Dr. Tucker was chosen its president. During his incum- bency the college was removed from Penfield to Macon, largely through his influence.
Dr. Tucker was a great preacher. His thoughts were original, his expressions clear cut and quaint, and his delivery forcible. It was a treat to hear him. There was a crispness about his preaching as refreshing as the air of an autumn morning. His mind was very active, and he was quick as a flash at repartee. In his home he was a charming host, and his charity to the needy was boundless. None but he knew how helpful he was to the poor.
1878-1881.
Rev. Patrick H. Mell, D. D., was elected by the board to succeed Chancellor Tucker.
The opening session of Chancellor Mell's adminis- tration was marked by a loss as serious as any the Uni- versity had ever sustained-the untimely death of Pro- fessor Waddell. William Henry Waddell inherited all the ability as a teacher which his father and grandfather had acquired through years of experience. Graduating with the first honor in 1852, he taught a year in a Mis- sissippi school. Elected tutor in the University, he entered the faculty, of which he remained a member un- til his death.
In 1878, a proposition was made to have four addi- tional trustees appointed from the Georgia State Agri- cultural Society, in which the board refused to acquiesce. Two years later, however, a bill was passed by the Leg- islature which provided for that addition and the gentle- mon elected by the Society, Messrs. W. H. Felton, J. H. Fannin, L. F. Livingston and S. M. H. Bird took their seats with the board. The year 1878 witnessed also the expansion of the branch college system. The school at Dahlonega had previously been incorporated into the University and was receiving annually $2,000 from the
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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA.
land-serip fund for its support. Now schools at Milledge- ville, Cuthbert, Thomasville and later at Hamilton, came forward with offers of land and houses, asking that they, . too, be adopted into the family. The theory of the branch college idea was that they would become feeders to the University, sending their graduates to us to take advanced or special courses in the completion of their education. As a matter of fact, they became not feed- ers, but competitors. The growing conviction in the minds of the trustees of the injury done the University by this course resulted in the withdrawal of financial aid from allexcepting Dahlonega, followed by a total divorce from Cuthbert and, practically, a separation from the others.
Much confusion and no little dissatisfaction resulted from the varied rates of tuition charges which had ex- isted since the organization of the State College.
Under the contract with Governor Smith, a certain number of students were to be admitted free, while oth- ers were charged a fixed sum in that college. A higher sum was charged in Franklin college. There were cer- tain free scholarships granted to the city of Athens and there were still other conditions under which a student's charges were remitted. In spite of the higher charges in Franklin College, however, more students were regis- tered in that than in the State College, doubtless, be- cause the student preferred the course whose degree would be of most value to him after graduation.
At this stage of affairs, the subject of free tuition was considered by the board. Approximate estimates showed that by charging a matriculation fee of ten dol- lars for each student, the income of the University would authorize free tuition with the aid from the State of $2,000 for one year to offset the tuition fees then received. But some of the bonds in which certain funds arising from the sale of lots had been invested, were about to become due. Unless these funds could be reinvested at the same rate of interest and that interest be permanent, the trustees were not assured that the plan could be adopted.
The whole matter was presented to the Legislature
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through a committee of the board and a statement of the facts made, which resulted in the Act of September 26, 1881.
This act, "To enable the trustees of the University of Georgia to inaugurate a system of free tuition in that institution ;" also provides that whenever the University shall present any of its valid matured bonds of the State to the treasury, it shall be the duty of the governor to issue to the trustees in lieu of those matured bonds, an obligation in writing, in the nature of a bond, in an amount equal to the principal of the matured bonds and falling due fifty years from date of issue, bearing inter- est at the rate of seven per cent. per annum and not re- deemable by the State before that time nor negotiable nor transferable by the trustees. The rate of interest est was afterwards reduced to three and one-half per cent.
After the passage of this act, tuition was made free in all the academic schools of the University.
Chancellor Mell's administration was a decade of prosperity to the University. He brought to the office long experience as a college professor, strong convictions of duty, a well-digested policy and the confidence of the powerful religious denomination to which he belonged. He at once set to work to gain more students, and to that end, his efforts, never flagged. The college dormitories were converted into boarding houses-Old College, under the fatherly care of Mr. Peter A. Sum- mey, and New College under Mr. Richardson-and ef- forts were made to give a semblance of home to those uninviting walls. This last was a compromise between the chancellor and trustees. Dr. Mell bitterly opposed the dormitory system. Heregarded it as an open bid for noise and disorder and idleness. He recommended their utter abolition and the scattering of students among the various homes and boarding houses of the town.
But the board did not see its way to abandon its only means of furnishing cheap board, and the college boarding house was the outcome. It served a purpose, but its influence was neither educative nor refining.
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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA.
1879-1882.
In 1879, it was stated to the trustees that Mr. Charles F. McCay, formerly Professor of Mathematics, desired to make a donation for the benefit of the University with - the view that it should be kept at compound interest for given time before being used. The board declared its willingness to accept it upon the conditions named.
It is estimated that about one hundred years will have expired before the interest of this fund can be avail- able under the trust. In that time, if no disaster befall, the fund will have amounted to about $10,000,000, and the University will have an income from that source of $500,000, with which to pay the salaries of its professors.
In 1882, the University was a recipient of another donation more immediately useful, but in a different way -the Charles McDonald Brown Scholarship Fund.
This endowment was established at the University by Hon. Joseph E. Brown. ex-Governor of Georgia, who was for over a quarter of a century a member of the Board of Trustees of the University.
Charles McDonald Brown died while prosecuting his studies at the University.
Governor Brown, desiring to advance the interests of the University, and aid worthy young men of the State in their efforts to get an education, and, at the same time, wishing to perpetuate the name of his deceased son, donated to the University fifty thousand dollars, money that might have been possessed by his son, if he had lived, to be known as " The Charles McDonald Brown Scholarship Fund." The interest on this amount is to be lent out to worthy young men, who, unaided, would not be able to acquire a University education, on the con- dition that they refund the money thus lent as soon as they can make it, after providing for their livelihood in an economical manner.
These two notable donations recall the gift from Mr. James Gunn Jr., in 1802, of one thousand dollars, the first private gift in money to the University, and coming at a time when sorely needed. This was followed in 1817 by a contribution of the same sum by Mr. John Marks,
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HISTORICAL SKETCH.
of Madison county, for the purchase of philosophical ap- paratus. From that time no private purse strings were unloosed in behalf of the University until 1854, when Dr. William Terrell, of Hancock county, sent communi- cation to the trustees, tendering $20,000, to provide for lectures on agriculture. This liberal donation was ac- cepted by the board in resolutions expressing their ap- preciation of Dr. Terrell's patriotic purpose, and the " Terrell Professorship of Agriculture " was created.
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